


Murder on the Argo Island Express

by alittlelesspain



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Murder Mystery, the rating is t mildly bordering on m, very mildly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 03:46:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 47,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15877863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlelesspain/pseuds/alittlelesspain
Summary: When freelance detective Maggie Sawyer boards a train on a politically unstable island-state, she doesn’t expect to walk right into a murder. A passenger - Mike Matthews - lies dead in his bunk, and Maggie is asked to investigate the case, in order to prevent an international incident.Any of the other passengers on the train could be the murderer, which is bad enough. What is worse is that, the closer Maggie comes to solving the case, the more likely it looks as if Alex Danvers, the person whom she’s becoming more and more drawn to, is the culprit.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You may have previously noticed that I posted the first two chapters of this fic, before taking them down. I took them down in order to finish the fic as a whole, and to refine the plot to make sure that there aren't any plotholes. Here's the completed thing posted at once. I hope you enjoy it :)

Maggie Sawyer looks up into the winter sky, as she follows James Olsen and Major Lucy Lane down the shallow embankment that leads to their temporary lodgings. Even on such a snowy evening, the sky above Argo Island is a bright blue, like something out of a postcard from a vacation destination. The incongruous snow around them is mostly undisturbed, save for their footprints.

“You wouldn’t think a place like this would have such a view,” James says from next to her, pointing his camera upwards again, to catch yet another cloud formation that had caught his eye.

Maggie nods, for indeed there is no hint from their peaceful surroundings, that the tiny island-state is currently under a tenuous military rule, and has for the past two years been embroiled in political upheaval, that had almost led to civil war.

As James continues to click away at his camera, she directs her attention to Lucy instead, just as the major turns to speak to her.

“I know he can be a bit gruff, but my fa— I mean, General Lane is very grateful to you for tying up the arson case so neatly,” Lucy says, smiling more warmly at her than Maggie remembers her doing during the entire stay here. “I can’t imagine how long we’d have been tied up in argument otherwise, on whether the Argonian or US government would get to try the case. Ms. Kane was right to recommend your detective agency to us, even if I was a bit doubtful at first.”

Maggie smiles briefly at the mention of Kate Kane.

“Well, we worked on quite a few cases together, when I was transferred out to Gotham,” she says, aware that Lucy shoots a curious glance at her after that statement.

“Right, before you moved back to National City and joined the NCPD again,” Lucy says, “and then left the force altogether, five years later.”

The obvious un-asked question hangs in the air, in the inviting pause after Lucy’s question.  _ Why? _

Maggie ignores it in favour of another brief smile, and changes the subject.

“Thanks for helping us out during our stay here,” she says instead. “We’ll be on our way, and out of your hair, by tomorrow.”

“I’m actually heading out on business tonight, so I won’t be able to see you off,” Lucy says. “But, I’ve arranged passage for you both on one of the afternoon trains heading out to the airport tomorrow, so you don’t have to worry about any of that. Sorry it can’t be any sooner. The ground passage has been very constrained, after the skirmishes during the summer.”

“It’s fine,” Maggie says. “I have a few cases waiting in National City for me, but nothing urgent. I’m in no hurry to get back.”

Lucy nods, and then looks awkwardly between her and James, when they reach the house.

“You’re going back to base, Luce?” James asks, as he puts his camera away.

Lucy looks even more awkward, says something in a low voice to James that Maggie doesn’t catch, before waving at them and walking away.

Maggie looks at James and silently mouths “Luce?”, which gets her a roll of eyes, and a light jab in her ribs.

Maggie jabs back hard, smiling when she hears his “Ow!”.

“Serves you right,” she says, and then. “Sorry we’re stuck here for another night.”

“Nah,” James says, shrugging in that easy-going way of his. “I knew what I was getting into when I joined your agency, Sawyer. Besides, I got some nice landscape shots.”

Maggie had gotten to know James Olsen when he had been working in the NCPD’s forensics department, just as she was moving up the ranks as a detective. They had gotten to be pretty close friends, but she had never realized how close until she’d announced her resignation from the NCPD, and her plans to start her own independent detective agency, at which point James had immediately offered to join her as her forensics aide, while pursuing his photojournalism hobby on the side. That had started a dizzying three years of solving cases that had eluded the law, some banal and some of international importance.

At that moment, though, the only thing on Maggie’s mind as she walks through the door of the house and flings her bag on the ratty sofa, is not a case. It is to finally get a good night’s sleep before rushing down to the train station the following day, after two harried weeks spent solving a politically-charged case for the US military.

“So, what  _ is _ up with you and Lucy?” she asks James, stifling a yawn. “I know you knew her before, but the two of you have been acting awkward ever since she first picked us up at the station.”

“We used to date for a little while,” James says. “This was back when I was out in Kandor as a war correspondent, and Lucy was stationed there in the peace corps at the same time. Her father didn’t like it, though, and it just kind of... fizzled out.”

He looks more sober than usual as he says that, and Maggie pats him on the arm as she passes by.

“Sorry to hear that, big guy,” she says, “She seems nice. Intense, but nice.”

“Intense,” James repeats, sounding amused. “I guess that’s the right word. She’s pretty rah rah justice, and all that.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing,” Maggie says, a little curious at the somehow disapproving tone of his voice, underneath the amusement.

“It’s not,” James says. “I’m just, I don’t know. I think sometimes that she follows the black-and-white worldview of her father too much.”

Maggie nods neutrally, thinking back to her rare encounters with General Samuel Lane, while she had been in the middle of pursuing the case he had hired her for. Despite the brevity of their encounters, the impression she had gotten was that Lucy wasn’t all that satisfied with her father, or his views on such matters.

“I guess it takes all kinds,” she says. “Maybe, out here in a place like this, Lucy’s approach is the kind that’s needed.”

That gets her a distracted murmur of assent from James, before he disappears into his own room. Maggie follows his lead and heads for her own, resolving for once to put all thoughts of the law out of her mind. She’s out as soon as her body hits the bed, blissfully ignorant of just how relevant everything she tries not to think about would become, by the very next day.

\---

 

By long-running habit, Maggie is a light sleeper. Even so, the sound of James banging on her door a mere four hours after she goes to bed, has her bolting out of bed, shaken abruptly out of her first peaceful bout of sleep on Argo Island.

“Bad news!” James calls through the door, as Maggie stumbles out of bed and throws a pillow in his direction, as if that would stop his banging. “The Roulette case just escalated; the NCPD managed to track her down and take her into custody.”

Maggie doesn’t bother with words in her bleary state, focusing her meager leftover stores of energy on dressing herself as quickly as possible, while simultaneously packing up her luggage.

“That can only hold her for a couple of days, before her lawyers raise hell and get her out,” James continues from behind the door, while she rushes about. “The NCPD needs you to come in and give your testimony, or she’s going to go free again.”

“I know,” Maggie grunts, her morning grogginess making her unusually clumsy as she opens the door and heads past James towards the bathroom. “Damn, the timing couldn’t be worse.”

“I’m calling Lucy!” James calls after her retreating form. “Maybe she can help us book an earlier train.”

When the two of them rush down to the station a mere thirty minutes later, Lucy is not to be found, and they are confronted instead by a stone-faced conductor, who informs them that the 10pm train is not boarding any more passengers.

“How is that possible?” Maggie asks, putting a staying hand on James’ wrist, as he seems to be gearing up to argue with the conductor. “How can a late night train going out of this place be booked full in the middle of winter?”

“But it  _ is _ full, ma’am,” the conductor — a Mr. John Jones, going by the badge pinned to his shirt — says, unflappable in the face of Maggie’s urgency. “I can try to find you a seat on a later train, if you want.”

“What’s going on here?” demands an impatient voice, and Maggie turns to see Lucy Lane striding towards them, looking as smartly dressed and awake as if it wasn’t oh god o-clock at night. “Why are you refusing these two passengers entry, conductor? They have urgent business in National City, and need to catch the earliest train to the airport.”

“The train is booked full, Major Lane,” Conductor Jones repeats, sounding only a little more deferential, as he is confronted by Lucy. “They’ll have to wait for the 6am one going out tomorrow.”

“Nonsense,” Lucy says, taking the tablet that the conductor had been holding. “I know the first carriage is reserved for the officers going home, but the second carriage should be pretty empty this time of year.”

“All the compartments in the second carriage are booked, too,” the conductor says.

Lucy’s skeptical look at his statement turns to one of reluctant surprise, as she scrolls down the tablet she had taken from him, scanning the layout on screen.

“What about compartment 1?” she says, jabbing at the only block in the carriage that is highlighted red. “It hasn’t been checked into yet, and I know we generally keep that one free for emergencies.”

“Even that one has been booked tonight, by a Mr. Clark Kent,” the conductor says. “He requested a—”

“It’s five minutes before departure,” Lucy cuts in firmly. “If Mr. Kent hasn’t checked in by now, he’s not showing up. Put Detectives Sawyer and Olsen in that compartment. I’ll be in the officers’ carriage up front, so direct Mr. Kent to me if he ever does show up.”

The stone-like face of Conductor Jones seems to shift just a little in disapproval, at her demand. Under the authority of Lucy, though, he gives in, directing Maggie and James towards the stairs of the train with cold politeness.

James immediately heads into their shared compartment, busying himself with putting his things away, but Maggie lags behind. She takes a tour of the entire carriage at the pretence of stretching her legs, taking the opportunity to take a brief look at each compartment as she passes. It is just as she paces the full length of the carriage and back, ending up right where she had first boarded, that a snatch of conversation reaches her ears from the platform outside.

“Thank you, Conductor Jones,” a woman’s voice is saying. “Just had to rush out to get a few last minute stuff.”

“Not a problem, Ms. Danvers,” the conductor’s voice comes back, as polite as when he had been addressing Maggie, but with an added warmth to it now. “We’ve still got two minutes before departure.”

Then, Maggie hears footsteps rushing up the stairs and heading her way, just as one of the two heavy bags she’s carrying slips out of her grasp, and falls to the floor of the shared corridor.

Before she can pick it back up, an arm is reaching past her, and easily hefting the load up. For a moment, Maggie is distracted by lean muscles straining under the weight, before she hurriedly looks up-

-into an equally distracting face, with concave cheekbones and a jaw that can cut steel, the owner of which is looking at her quizzically.

“Thanks,” Maggie says, reaching out for the bag, after a pause where she’s aware that she had been staring. “Guess I’m not so well-coordinated, this late at night.”

“No problem,” the new arrival replies, but the words come out oddly stalled, and her gaze is still fixated on Maggie, with a small frown now beginning to bloom on her face.

It sets Maggie on edge, that frown, but she dismisses that discomfort as a reflexive reaction born out of habit, and smiles instead.

“I’m Maggie,” she says, and then, recalling how the conductor had addressed the woman. “I’ll see you around, Danvers.”

“It’s Alex,” comes the reply, called out to her as she walks away.

“See you around, Alex,” Maggie corrects with a responding nod of her head, as she heads into her own compartment.

She finds herself oddly preoccupied by the encounter as she stows away her own luggage, replying to James’ casual remarks in a very absent-minded way. That quizzical look Alex Danvers had directed at her had been more than just mere curiosity towards a stranger. That alone puzzles Maggie enough, that she almost misses the conductor’s announcement of the train starting off.

She rushes to look out the window as the train picks up speed, a habit she had developed in childhood that had never gone away. It is while she is watching the quickly receding platform, empty of passengers, that something else strikes her.

“Lucy was right,” Maggie says out loud, above the roar of the train.

She doesn’t clarify until James turns around from his unpacking, and looks at her inquiringly.

“Mr. Kent, whoever he is, didn’t show up after all.”

\---

 

Despite her chosen profession, it’s not in Maggie’s habit to borrow trouble. Therefore, despite her puzzlement over the odd behaviour of one Alex Danvers, she resolves not to pursue further the matter of what had struck Alex about her so much, that the woman hadn’t been able to stop staring at her after the first glance.

This resolve is immediately tested when she finishes setting up her bunk, and wanders towards the restaurant car, her stomach loudly making her aware that she hadn’t eaten since that morning. No sooner than Maggie heads towards a plate of bagels, does Alex enter the car too, accompanied by a bespectacled blonde woman who seems to be talking away to her a mile a minute.

Maggie wills herself to scan the new arrivals for only a few seconds — during which Alex is pointedly looking away from her, she notices — before distracting herself with buttering the bagel and pouring herself some juice. Under the pretense of waiting for the bagel to toast, she takes the opportunity to scope out the other passengers already milling around in the car.

A few paces away from her, by the coffee machine, stands a middle-aged woman, who would be striking looking even apart from her hair, which is brown with a single rock-and-roll streak of white running through it. Maggie watches with idle curiosity, and some amusement, as she jabs at the buttons on the coffee machine in confusion, until a nervous-looking younger man from nearby approaches her.

“It’d taste a lot better if you put a new cup in,” he offers, to the by-now-exasperated woman. “Here, let me show you.”

He makes a fresh cup, watched closely by his companion, while Maggie watches them both.

“Here, I think you might like this one better,” he says, as the woman takes the coffee from him. “I’m Winn, by the way.”

“Astra.” comes the impassive reply, as she tastes the new drink, a smile blooming on her face, as she apparently finds it to her liking. “Astra In-Ze. Thank you... Winn.”

Just then, Maggie’s bagel pops out of the toaster. When she turns back, the pair she had been discreetly observing are engaged in a discussion about various types of coffee. Maggie soon finds her attention drifting back to Alex and her blonde companion, although the two of them seem embroiled in their own conversation, seemingly not noticing her at all. Maggie finds it interesting that, compared to Alex’s sparse plate, the other woman’s plate is loaded with a little bit of practically everything available in the car, on top of a smaller second plate that she’s juggling.

“Look Alex, they have pumpkin spice flavor!” she says, rushing towards the drinks table, but not before snatching up some dinner rolls on the way, from the table that Maggie is leaning against.

“Great, I guess indigestion is on the menu tonight,” Alex says, following her. “Slow down, Kara.”

“Of course you’d say that, Ms. Coffee-as-black-as-your-soul,” the woman named Kara snarks right back. “Oh, I guess I should get a hot chocolate for Miss Grant. She doesn’t like coffee right before she sleeps.”

“You know you’re not her assistant anymore, right?” Alex asks. “You’re a reporter in your own right now, Kara. You don’t have to run around getting stuff for her anymore.”

That just gets her a dismissive wave of the hand from the other.

“I just like helping her out,” Kara says. “She’s on a skype call with Carter, and she probably won’t be finished before they take the food away.”

“That’s her problem.”

“You’re so critical of her, Alex,” Kara says, in a half-whining voice.

“I’m your sister,” Alex says, sounding a little amused, as she helps said sister balance her two by-now-teetering plates of food. “It’s my job to be critical of your boss. Should we get something for Lena too?”

“Lena doesn’t eat after eight,” Kara says. “And I think she has a video conference with Sam tonight. She says it’s just a business thing, but you know how the two of them get, if they’re away from each other for too long—”

Her spirited voice seems to peter off right then, turning quiet and a little shaky. Maggie looks in her direction, surprised at this sudden change in demeanor, just in time to catch the new arrival who had undoubtedly caused it.

Walking in through the door is a man about her age. His shirt is almost fully unbuttoned, leaving more of a toned and hairless chest on display than Maggie cares for. He walks through the compartment with a breezy confidence that doesn’t sit well with her either, and that impression doesn’t change when he snaps his fingers impatiently towards Winn Schott.

“Winn, did you book my flight to Gotham for tomorrow?”

“Yes, Mr. Matthews,” Winn says, hastily preparing another cup of coffee and proffering it to the new arrival.

The young man takes it in a leisurely fashion, before turning back to the two Danvers sisters. He smiles at them in an amicable way, which only seems to make Kara withdraw further, while Alex’s face resembles a thundercloud.

“Mike Matthews,” she says, through gritted teeth.

“Don’t worry, Alex, I’m passing through,” Mike says.

He throws a wink at Kara before heading to the table nearby Maggie’s. With the same fascination that others would have at witnessing trainwrecks, and armed with an experienced detective’s special brand of prescience, Maggie watches as he browses an interested eye over the food, before inevitably directing said interested eye at  _ her. _

“Didn’t see you when we were boarding,” he says, shifting his torso in a way that leaves even more skin on display, and regarding her with a lopsided smile that Maggie supposes  _ would _ work, on someone into that kind of white-bread charm.

“Late arrival,” she says, unmoved on account of decidedly not being that someone.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Alex turning away from her again, but Kara’s gaze seems to be fixed in her and Mike Matthews’ direction, making Maggie feel inexplicably guilty.

When she turns her attention back to her food, Matthews has sidled up to her side of the table. He runs an eye over her again, in a way that leaves no doubt whatsoever as to what his intentions are. Suddenly, Maggie doesn’t feel so hungry anymore.

“So, where are you heading to?” he asks.

Maggie, tired, sleepless and running spare on her last string of patience, decides to cut that advance off in the bud, instead of smiling through an entire song and dance.

“You’re barking up the wrong lesbian, buddy,” she says, softening the words with a barely-there smile of her own, before heading out of the compartment with her plate. “Enjoy your dinner.”

Just as she exits the car, though, she could have sworn that there had been a sharp intake of breath from Alex Danvers after her words, and that she had turned around to stare at Maggie again.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to post a disclaimer here that this story was entirely plotted out mid-season 2, right after the Valentine's episode. It's taken me this long to actually write it up because I had other WIPs on the go, but this fic definitely reflects how I felt about Mon-El at that time. I absolutely loathed him and hated how he took away Kara's agency, and kept the plot from focusing on her. He was a lot better in Season 3, and even though I still hated that they spent so much time on him in S3, he wasn't an absolutely horrendous person the way he was in S2.
> 
> All this preamble is to put this fic in proper context. I didn't hate S3 Mon-El, even though I still found him a useless addition to the plot. I did absolutely loathe S2 Mon-El, and he is 100% what inspired this fic.
> 
>  **P.S.** Thank you to @Sralinchen, who beta-ed this _after_ posting, and who "famous last words"-ed me - after I breezily said that I'd probably caught all the mistakes in my previous readthroughs - by finding 140 more mistakes XD


	2. Chapter 2

When she returns to her own compartment from the restaurant car, Maggie finds James sprawled on the floor, eating his way through a full plate with one hand, while scrolling through camera pictures with the other.

“Anything good?” she asks, sitting next to him and starting on her own bagel.

“A few, but nothing to write home about,” James replies, before glancing curiously from her plate to her. “What took you so long?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were off for almost 20 minutes,” he says. “It doesn’t take anyone that long to pick out toast and salmon. What kept you?”

Maggie swallows her first bite before answering him, feeling a little foolish as she goes into some detail about what had played out in the restaurant car, and about the people involved.

“So... scary lady and her sister, the coffee machine destroyer, nervous secretary, the walking ad for Axe body spray, and you,” James says, at the end of her recounting, ticking off each person with his fingers. “Have I got that right?”

“She wasn’t scary, just standoffish,” Maggie protests. “And, they also mentioned a Cat, and a Lena. You don’t think they could have possibly meant—”

“Cat Grant, media mogul?” James finishes for her. “I  _ thought _ that was her voice complaining about the thread count of the sheets, when I was walking by the third compartment.”

“You know her?” Maggie asks him.

“I did a location shoot for CatCo Magazine a few years ago, before I joined the NCPD full time,” James says. “I never worked directly with her, but I saw her around a few times.”

“What is the CEO of CatCo Worldwide doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” Maggie muses out loud, frowning at the incongruity of it. “Even if she was doing a focus piece on Argo City, why didn’t she just send one of her reporters alone to cover it?”

“You never know with Cat,” James says, shrugging. “Remember that big earthquake in National City, three years ago? She did part of that coverage herself, from as close to ground zero as the news vans could get.”

“Alright,” Maggie says. “And the other one... Lena. Some kind of corporate executive, I gathered.”

“Oh, I saw her in the corridor,” James says. “Lena Luthor. She’s from Luthor Industries. They’re big game in the defense industry.”

“That checks out,” Maggie says, leaning back and stabbing at another slice of salmon.

“Save that brain for Roulette’s shenanigans, Sherlock,” James says, his tone teasing even though most of his attention seems to be back on his photo roll. “I don’t think we’ve got to worry about some random passengers on a train.”

Maggie rolls her eyes, but goes back to eating. Her brain doesn’t quite let go of what she had witnessed in the restaurant car, though.

“There’s something weird,” she says, when James is stowing his camera away. “That Mike guy... I feel like I’ve seen him before, somewhere.”

“Mr. Chinstrap?” James asks. “He doesn’t look like the type of crowd you run with.”

“I have no crowd to run with,” Maggie says, slapping his arm lightly. “But still, there’s something familiar about him; I just can’t place it.”

By the time James is turning off the lights and bidding her a sleepy goodbye, she’s no closer to an answer for that puzzle. Rather bothered by that fact, and on account of being not much of a sleeper in strange spaces in general, Maggie gravitates towards the window, watching stray snow flurries drift by in the night. The freezing wind bites into her skin with all the sharpness of a Nebraskan winter. She closes her eyes and breathes in deeply, enjoying the brief quiet before the train starts off again towards its next stop.

It’s as she’s hanging half out the window, tongue sticking out like a dog to taste the snowflakes, that she suddenly catches snatches of words, coming from the snowed-in embankment outside.

“It’s so beautiful out here,” comes Alex Danvers’ voice, wistful and full of a yearning so complex that Maggie can’t decrypt it at once. “I just... I just wish I could enjoy it, for once!”

Maggie blinks, automatically moving back from the window and out of the view of the two figures below.

“I wish you’d never gotten caught up in all this, Alex,” comes another familiar voice, that of Conductor Jones’.

Maggie blinks again, because there is something odd about the conductor’s tone too. She had already noticed in previous interactions that he had spoken to Alex with an unusual warmth, but there is something new there, now. Something like familiarity.

When she sneaks another glance out of the window, she notices Alex’s head turning around and upwards, slowly but inexorably in the direction of the train, towards her own compartment’s obviously open window. Maggie retreats again, but she can still hear Alex’s reply to the conductor.

“Oh, I don’t mind the winter,” her voice floats up, casual again, and far too loud to be natural. “Not all Californians are that fragile, conductor.”

The reply that Conductor Jones makes is low-pitched and indistinct. Maggie lingers by the window a little longer, before sliding it shut as noiselessly as she can manage and retreating into her bunk, even more puzzled than she had been before.

Despite Alex’s clumsy efforts to cover it up, she is sure that it was not the weather those two had been discussing. What bothers Maggie more is the familiar way in which the conductor had addressed Alex.

Odd. She had assumed that the two hadn’t known each other at all.

\---

 

She sleeps in late the next morning, waking up only when the sun is high in the sky. By the time Maggie makes her way down to the restaurant car, most the food has already been cleared away, and there is only one person — Kara Danvers —  remaining in the room, staring out of the window while munching absentmindedly on a doughnut.

Maggie shoots her a brief glance while she fixes up her morning coffee, curious about this mild-faced woman who seems the very antithesis of her sister. Kara, though, seems more intent on something going on in the platform below, from the focused way that her attention is trained out the window. And yet, as Maggie finishes preparing the coffee and walks out of the room, a low voice halts her.

“It’s so beautiful out, isn’t it?” Kara murmurs, still not looking at Maggie, but clearly addressing her, “It’s hard to believe there’s going to be a blizzard tonight.”

“Is there?” Maggie asks, joining her at the window after some hesitation.

She looks up into the peaceful sky that Kara is indicating, but not before taking a brief scan of the pavement below. The first thing to catch her eyes is Mike Matthews walking slowly towards the open doors of the train, followed in a harried manner by his secretary. So that is what Kara had been staring at so intently, Maggie realizes, with some disquiet.

When she looks back at her again, Kara wears once more the mildly pleasant expression that Maggie has come to associate with her, though it is also tinged by curiosity.

“So what did General Lane want with you?” Kara asks. “There’s no way he called in someone like you here in the middle of winter for a casual visit.”

Maggie stares at her, alarmed, and Kara’s curiosity morphs into something more sheepish and apologetic.

“Conductor Jones told us you were some kind of detective,” she says. “And, I saw Major Lane directing you to the platform herself, so it was pretty easy to put two and two together.”

Maggie eyes her warily, unsure of how to proceed. From what little she knows of her, Kara seems to simply be an over-eager newly-minted reporter, eager to join her boss on her first assignment. Yet, her old instincts from the force are hard-wired, making her wary of the press, no matter what form it takes.

“It’s fine,” Kara says. “I know you’re not going to say anything.”

“Right,” Maggie says, still wary.

“But, it’s pretty obvious that General Lane hired you for a case,” Kara says. “One he’s going to go ahead with prosecuting behind closed doors, no doubt.”

That, and the not-entirely-approving way she says it, really sets Maggie on edge.

“Even if I were to have taken on a case,” she says, “the matter of dispensing justice would be out of my hands.”

“But, are you okay with that?” Kara presses. “Knowing that whatever your investigation comes up with, the general has the absolute authority to do what he wants with your findings?”

Maggie grows even warier, as she realizes that this woman is far from the bubbly pushover that she seems to be at face value.

“There’s no catch all solution to this kind of situation, in a place like this,” she ventures, rather feeling like she’s walking on a minefield, and wondering if her name is going to be headlining CatCo’s  _ The Tribune _ the next day, with some grotesquely out-of-context quote. “Whatever the general decided on, I’m sure he would have a reason for it.”

“I don’t agree.”

Maggie glances sideways, surprised at the sudden steel those words had been spoken with.

“You don’t agree that sometimes there are extenuating circumstances?”

“I don’t think that’s the way to build or uphold a justice system,” Kara’s answer comes out strong and clear. “If we start making exceptions, where does it end?”

“Somewhere,” Maggie says, bemused. “Everything ends somewhere.”

“That’s a cop-out answer, and you know it.”

Maggie bristles at that rapid-fire retort, and feels the urge to be defensive, to argue her own position, until she looks at Kara’s face and realizes the ire isn’t directed at her. The stormy set of Kara’s face is directed unseeingly into the distance out the window. She might almost have been arguing with herself.

“And your belief in that absolute justice, would you not compromise that for anyone?” Maggie asks, making a leap of judgement. “No one in the world could sway you?”

She knows that her question hits its mark when the steely certainty in Kara’s eyes flickers.

“Would you?” Kara asks.

“I don’t know,” Maggie admits. “But, I’m not looking to build a system of justice. I’m just trying to do a job, and maybe you don’t approve of that, but someone has to do it.”

Which perhaps proves Kara’s point, she realizes with an amused clarity, suddenly getting some insight into where the other might be coming from.

But, Kara laughs suddenly, too, the rancour gone from her voice.

“You sound like my sister,” she says, eyes crinkling in an endearing way. She looks very young then, younger than her words mere minutes before would have belied. “But, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to set a standard, and to live up to it, and expect others to live up to it, too.”

She is still smiling, when a clipped voice interrupts them.

“Kara,” Alex Danvers says, as she nears, looking as forbidding as ever. “I think your boss was looking for you. Something about going over an interview transcript.”

“Oh right, that,” Kara says, as a distracted look enters her face.

Alex simply nods, shifting to the side as Kara rushes for the door, but the latter stops mid-exit and looks back at Maggie, with a mischievous but reassuring smile on her face.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “That was all off the record. I’ve got no plans to write some no-holds-barred exposé on justice system reform yet.”

Still, as she walks out, Maggie gets the feeling that their talk had been more than just an off-the-cuff conversation. That feeling isn’t dissipated by the way that Alex lingers behind instead of following her sister, and stares at Maggie with a half-questioning and half-suspicious glance.

“So, how long before she bags that Pulitzer?” Maggie asks, mostly to break the silence and escape that interrogating stare. “I guess working for Cat Grant would give her a headstart.”

When Alex continues staring at her, now looking more puzzled, like she hadn’t anticipated that line of conversation, Maggie elaborates.

“Your sister, I mean,” she says. “She sure is something.”

For the first time, that gets a reaction out of Alex that isn’t a suspicious glower.

“Yeah,” she replies.

Despite the brevity of her answer, as if in betrayal of herself, her lips twitch up in a smile. It’s a small one, but it transforms her face, gentling the harsh angles of it and throwing a new light on her.

And that is how, as she walks away, Maggie learns an important fact about Alex Danvers: that, whoever she is, she cares about her sister very, very much.

\---

 

“Well?” Maggie asks James, later in the afternoon, having recounted her entire talk with Kara to him, while they linger on the platform during another brief stop. “What do you think?”

When James merely hums a noise of acknowledgment, and goes back to fiddling with his camera, she nudges him again.

“What do you think?” she repeats. “Isn’t that an odd conversation to have, with someone you barely know?”

“She’s Cat Grant’s protégé,” James says, before he shrugs and goes back to shooting. “If you’ve ever worked at CatCo, you’ll soon realize they’re all kind of intense like that.”

Maggie frowns and sips her second cup of coffee for the day, thinking his words over while James shoots away. The relative silence of the platform is disturbed only by the regular clicks of the camera shutter, and by Cat Grant’s voice a few paces away from them, complaining to the conductor. Cat Grant, Maggie has learned quickly over the course of the day, has opinions on everything. Currently, she seems to be giving her opinion of the longer-than-optimal waiting times at each stop to Conductor Jones, in painstaking and rather-insulting detail.

“I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes,” James says, nodding discreetly towards the pair during a brief lull in his shooting, when he sees what Maggie is staring at.

“What, you don’t want to be subjected to a painstakingly detailed account of how you’re incompetent at every part of your job?” Maggie asks.

James rolls his eyes at her, before his gaze turns puzzled.

“It’s weird, though.”

“What is?” Maggie asks, jumping on his comment too quickly, so much so that James throws an askance glance at her.

“It’s nothing big,” he says, lowering his voice even further. “It’s just, Cat has always had a reputation for being picky, but I don’t remember her being this bad.”

Maggie frowns as she takes this new piece of information in.

“You don’t find that odd?” she asks him.

“It’s been a few years,” James says, shrugging. “I mean, being CEO of the biggest media company on the west coast, maybe it all went to her head.”

“Maybe,” Maggie says, frowning at the woman, who is still berating the conductor in a low, dangerously-pitched voice.

When she turns away, James is staring at her with some concern.

“Look, I know you’re on edge about the whole thing with Roulette,” he says, “But, maybe you need to chill out a bit, you know?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know,” James says, with a protesting gesture of his hands. “I’m just saying, maybe detectives like you are wired to be suspicious of everything, and that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s something there.”

It’s a fair point, and yet, Maggie finds herself reluctant to let her guard down.

“Maybe you’re right,” she concedes. “Maybe it’s just being in a strange place, that’s got me all wound up.”

As she goes back to her drink, leaving James to his work, two other passengers from the train pass by, in the middle of their walk from one length of the platform to the other. Astra In-Ze and Winn Schott, Maggie recalls, dredging up their names from her bleary recollection of the previous night. She stares down into her mug as they pass, resolving to take James’ advice, but snatches of their conversation reach her anyways, as the two don’t exactly bother to keep their voices down.

“You Americans,” the woman is saying, sounding incredulous. “I don’t know how you managed to ruin coffee, but you did.”

“That’s just your gut reaction talking,” Winn is insisting, seemingly less self-conscious now, as he gears up for an argument. “Ok, maybe protein powder frappés are a bit much, but you were just fine with the spiced latte from this morning.”

“That’s as well,” Astra acknowledges, “But—”

They continue out of earshot, still hashing it out, the nerves-prone secretary arguing with the powerfully-built woman in a confident way that Maggie had never seen him address his employer or anyone else with.

“Now,  _ that _ I find odd,” James informs Maggie, with an amused nod at their retreating pair, before going back to fiddling with his camera.

\---

 

Despite a few more stops along the way, the train travels at a regular pace that day, leaving even Maggie second-guessing her misgivings as mere tricks of her suspicion-prone mind. As the night approaches, though, something happens that has her feeling uneasy again.

It happens after dinner that night, when she returns to the restaurant car to grab a bottle of water for the night. As she walks towards the fridge, a voice from by the window startles her.

“Sawyer. You’re still up.”

When Maggie looks back, Mike Matthews is standing by the window and watching her thoughtfully, while his secretary hovers behind him with anxious eyes.

“You’re the cop?” he asks, looking her up and down with a doubtful expression that Maggie dislikes. “I didn’t realize it was you, when Winn first told me there was one on the train.”

“Ex,” Maggie corrects him. “I’m freelance, now.”

“Which works out just fine for me,” Mike says, flashing a smile — there’s that faint feeling of familiarity again, “I need you to take on a job for me, as it happens.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Maggie says. “I’m on my way to deal with a case, and I’ll likely be tied up with that for the next few weeks.”

“I can pay you better than whoever hired you,” comes the immediate answer, as the man encroaches closer.

“It’s not that kind of case, Mr. Matthews,” Maggie says, smiling thinly. “But, for the record, what is it that you want me to do for you?”

“Safety,” he says. “I want you to guarantee me safety, from an enemy.”

Maggie, who had been more intent on brushing past him to get to the fridge, pauses.

“Enemy?” she asks, recalculating her initial assessment of him.

“Someone has it out for me,” Mike says. “My life has been threatened.”

“I’m a detective, not a bodyguard,” Maggie says. “I don’t think I can help you.”

“It’s not a bodyguard I need,” he says, patting his pocket. “Don’t get me wrong, I can take care of myself, when push comes to shove—”

For a moment, as he pats the pocket, there’s the barrel of a revolver catching the light, before Mike takes his hand away, leaving Maggie wondering if she had imagined that momentary glint.

“But, I’d feel better with someone watching my back, and from all accounts you’re good at that sort of thing,” he finishes. “So, what about it, Sawyer?”

Maggie looks away from him, staring at the row of water bottles lining the side compartment of the fridge, rather than at the man who had spoken.

“I’m afraid I still can’t oblige you,” she says, at the end of her study.

“Is it money?” Mike asks, attempting another coaxing smile at her. “You can write your own cheque.”

“I think you misunderstand,” Maggie cuts in. “It’s not a matter of money. No amount of money could persuade me to take on this assignment from you.”

“Why not?” he asks, his mouth in a peevish downwards slant.

Maggie thinks back to his swaggadacious entrance, at the way he had smirked at Kara Danvers the previous night, and how he had sounded entirely too surprised to learn that Maggie was the detective that his secretary had told him about. Then she studies the man again, taking in the straight line of nose, those regular features, and that sculpted beard that could hide a weak chin, or any amount of ills, or nothing at all.

“Because I remember you from somewhere,” she says, frowning at him. “Until I remember from where, I’m not comfortable taking on an assignment from you.”

And with that, Maggie snags a bottle from the fridge, and leaves the compartment.

\---

 

By the time she returns to her compartment for the night, it’s dark and all the other ones seem to be locked. Maggie can hear the murmur of voices coming from behind the doors of some as she passes, but for the most part, the passengers seem to have turned in for the night.

All except the door to the fourth compartment, which is slightly ajar. And, Maggie realizes, with a start that she manages to hide, Alex Danvers is standing behind it, making no pretense of staring past her. Rather, she is glaring directly at Maggie, her expression defiant.

Maggie’s first act is to bristle, because really, what is this woman’s problem? She debates the idea of marching over and asking Alex exactly that, before thinking better of it. Why borrow trouble, especially on a secluded train in the middle of nowhere? So, she tamps down the annoyance and meets the stare with a pleasant half-smile, before moving past Alex to her own compartment.

As she turns into her own compartment, though, she can’t help but wonder if Alex knows that it had been her eavesdropping, on her conversation out by the snowbank, and whether that was the reason she seems so wary of Maggie.

In which case,  _ why? _

\---

 

Unlike the previous night, when sheer exhaustion had allowed her to sleep despite the strangeness of her surroundings, Maggie finds herself tossing and turning, kept awake by both the sound of the howling blizzard outside, and by the rocking of the train on its way.

It is sometime in the middle of this uneasy sleep, that a strangled yell from a compartment has her bolting upright in bed. She springs up, hand automatically going for her gun, while James groans and shifts in the top bunk. Maggie creeps to the door, unlocking it and toeing it open just a little, when she hears footsteps past her, heading in the direction of the sound. Moments later, the conductor’s voice sounds.

“Yes, Mr. Matthews, sir?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Mike Matthews’ insouciant voice replies. “I just fell out of my bunk.”

Maggie hears the conductor give a murmured reply of assent, before the footsteps head away, presumably back to his seat. Relieved, she goes back to bed herself, but not before thumbing her phone open, and taking a look at the time. Twenty three minutes to one.

It is when she lies back in her bunk, that Maggie realizes the rollicking motion of the train is absent. Instead, it seems deadly still. Somehow, that just makes it harder to go to sleep, and Maggie finds herself staring at the roof of her bunk, in that limbo-state between sleep and wakefulness, listening to James’ faint snoring. From the compartment next to her, she hears the sound of Mike Matthews moving about, of a tap being run, and washing sounds. Then she hears the door of said compartment open, and the sound of someone shuffling outside, softly as if they’re wearing bedroom slippers. Maggie continues staring at the ceiling, debating the merits of going to get a second bottle of water. Just as she’s getting out of bed, the emergency alarm to summon the conductor rings from some compartment, loud and shrill.

Maggie grits her teeth as it continues to ring, the sound coming faster, as if the summoner is growing impatient. Finally, footsteps sound, and Maggie hears the conductor rushing to a door not far from her own. Then, there are voices again: Conductor Jones’ usual unruffled tones, and the low but decidedly irritated voice of a woman’s.

It’s Cat Grant, Maggie realizes blearily, remembering what James had said that afternoon. She seems to be complaining again, hissing at the conductor about something while he attempts to soothe her.

Maggie, somewhat curious now, edges towards the door, just in time to hear the conductor bid a final “good night, miss” to Cat. She opens the door to her compartment, just as he passes by, on his way back to his seat.

When she sticks her head out and smiles at him, the usually laconic man seems glad to stop and speak with her.

“Out to stretch your legs, Ms. Sawyer?”

“Just getting some water,” Maggie says, before gesturing at the compartment that he had been returning from. “Ms. Grant seems to be having a good time.”

Conductor Jones makes a slight gesture with his eyes, that Maggie suspects might be the equivalent of other people rolling their eyes.

“It seems Ms. Grant mistakenly thought that there was an intruder in her compartment,” he says. “I pointed out to her that it was impossible, of course, given the small size of the room, but she insisted that there was a man in there when she woke up. When I asked how he managed to get out and leave the door bolted behind him, of course I received no answer. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, between the snow drift, and—”

“The snow drift?” Maggie interrupts, a new worry entering her mind.

“We’ve stopped, didn’t you notice?” the conductor asks, looking at her oddly. “We’ve got a crew coming in to clear the track up ahead, but it’ll take some time, given that the blizzard is still going strong.”

Maggie lets out a breath of stifled frustration.

“You don’t know how long we’ll be held up?” she asks, focused less on Cat Grant’s supposed intruder, and more on how this would impede her from getting to National City in time to testify against Roulette.

The conductor simply gives another shake of the head.

“It’s difficult, in a cut-off location like this,” he says. “Once, we were snowed in for seven days, but I don’t think it’ll be so bad, this time.”

Maggie shakes her head and withdraws, waving off the man’s offer to retrieve the water she had wanted, in favor of returning to bed and brooding some more, even more worried now about how Roulette’s trial would go.

It seems, however, that the universe is not willing to let her do even that in peace. Soon after she returns to bed, there is a heavy thud against her door, causing Maggie to jump up and go for her gun again.

When she sticks her head outside again, there is the conductor sitting placidly at the far end of the corridor, engrossed in reading something on his tablet. On the other side, a tall figure in a black tracksuit is heading leisurely towards one of the farthest compartments. Maggie stares, then pulls back into her compartment, sliding it locked again.

Shaking her head as she stares at the gun in her hand, she stows it back away, and tucks herself back in under the thick blankets of her bed. It’s the Roulette case, she assures herself, as she drifts off to an uneasy sleep again. That must be what has her so on edge.

\---

 

When Maggie wakes up the next morning, the train is still, and it’s almost exactly eight o’clock. A glance outside shows the blizzard from the night before to have died down, which might explain James’ absence from the compartment. Maggie, not so eager about the delay in their journey, takes her time getting ready.

Unlike the previous day, the restaurant car is full when she enters it that morning, and there is a frustrated hubbub that tells Maggie that the rest of the passengers have already been informed of the snow-in.

“I’m going to be late for my son’s concert,” Cat Grant is saying in a low and furious voice to one of the busboys. “I have a company to run, and you’re telling me I can’t even get a phone call out?”

Maggie gives both her and the busboy a wide berth, instead heading over to the coffee machine to make herself a mug, while she scopes out the other passengers.

Despite her best efforts, the first person her eyes land on is Alex Danvers, who looks as impassive as ever, while her sister is thumbing down her phone, looking worried.

“I can’t get a signal,” Kara is saying, just loud enough for Maggie to catch the words. “Eliza is going to be so worried.”

“It’s probably down because of the storm,” Alex assures her. “And Mom will be fine. She’s used to us by now.”

Maggie turns away from them to see Winn at the other end of the room, wolfing down a croissant in-between replying to an inquiry from Lena Luthor.

“No, Mr. Matthews isn’t up yet,” he’s telling her. “He doesn’t like to be disturbed before nine, usually, but I’ll let him know that you wanted to meet with him.”

Maggie idly checks her own phone while she sips her coffee, verifying the lack of signal that Kara had been speaking of. By the time she looks back up, Cat is still going at full steam about the delay, though the busboy is nowhere to be found. Astra is leaning against the wall next to her, looking bored, and occasionally staring up at the ceiling in exasperation, whenever Cat’s voice pitches a note lower in frustration.

“They are working to fix it, kitty cat,” she murmurs. “Stop being so impatient.”

“Forgive me for not being impressed by the military’s definition of “fixing it”. Cat retorts without missing a beat, before launching into yet another low-voiced tirade.

“This is going to be bad, isn’t it?” says a voice behind Maggie just as she tunes out, making her jump.

She turns to see James frowning at his phone, before putting it away.

“For the Roulette interrogation, I mean,” he clarifies.

“The NCPD will have at least heard of the delay, if they’re tracking the trains’ arrival times at the airport,” Maggie says. “They’ll try to stall for as long as they can.”

She tries to sound more confident than she really feels, but she doesn’t think James is fooled, by the brief sympathetic glance he throws her way, before he focuses his attention back on his tea.

While he fiddles with his drink, Maggie moves around the room. Really, she’s winding her way towards Alex, but she tells herself it’s only because Alex is the only one in the room who doesn’t look angry, or exasperated or worried. If anything, she seems more at ease than Maggie has ever seen her before.

“You seem to be the only patient one here,” Maggie says, when she reaches her.

Alex eyes her sideways, for a brief measure when Maggie feels herself to be sized up, before making a reply.

“I don’t think patience is the word for it,” she says. “It’s not like I can go out and clear the tracks myself.”

From her tone, she sounds as if she would indeed be out there doing so right now, if such a thing were possible, and Maggie finds herself smiling at that idea.

“Tell you what, Superwoman," she says. “If I find a shovel, I’ll send it your way, yeah?”

There’s finally the slightest thaw in that impassive expression, as Alex’s lips twitch. Maggie watches, interested and somewhat enamored, as the woman appears to be physically fighting off a smile.

“Well, look at that,” she says, grinning a little herself, at Alex’s confused stare. “You  _ can _ do something other than glare at me.”

“I don’t glare,” comes the automatic defensive reply.

“Yes, you do, all the time,” Maggie says. “Except now. Keep that smile up, and I might even think you’re capable of being friendly.”

That has the effect of making a slight flush creep up Alex’s face. All at once, their delay seems less annoying to Maggie, and Roulette’s pending trial seems less anxiety-inducing, if in return there exists a possibility to get to know this side of Alex Danvers a little better.

Then, Alex glances sideways at her, and mumbles something.

“What?” Maggie asks, tilting her head and leaning in.

“My sister,” Alex says a little louder, and more abruptly, as she jerks back from her. “Whom I have to find. Right now. Because she’ll be worried. Yes.”

“But, she’s right there,” Maggie says, tipping her head towards Kara, who is now chatting animatedly with Lena Luthor, all worries about her unresponsive phone seemingly forgotten.

“Right, well,” Alex says, flushing slightly rosier, and stalking over to the two. Maggie turns away, caught somewhere between amusement and disappointment, and tries to shrug the dismissal off, turning her attention to the window instead.

The near-undisturbed snowy landscape that greets her outside is picturesque, despite the frustrations it had brought with it. As Maggie sips her coffee and stares down at it, it occurs to her that Lucy is nowhere to be found. She would have expected the major to at least put in a brief appearance to their carriage, if only to reassure the passengers.

It turns out that she doesn’t have long to wonder over that. Maggie is just turning away from the window, deciding whether to get something for breakfast, when the restaurant car opens again, and Conductor Jones strides in towards her.

“Detective Sawyer,” the conductor addresses her, looking as stone-faced as ever. “Major Lane would like to see you immediately.”

\---

 

If the abrupt summons by the conductor hadn’t clued Maggie in, Lucy’s stormy face as she enters the first car is enough indication that something is wrong.

“Come in,” Lucy says tersely. “Turns out it’s a good thing that you were on this train, after all. We’re going to need you, detective.”

“What’s going on?” Maggie asks. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything!” Lucy says. “First the storm and the delay, and now—”

“Now what?” James, who had followed Maggie, and been let in after some hesitation from Lucy, prompts.

“Now a passenger has been murdered!” Lucy says, after a sharp intake of breath.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to @Sralinchen for beta-ing this entire fic.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning in this chapter for the description of the dead body. Not graphic, but go in warned.

A silence falls around the compartment at Lucy’s words, with Maggie and James glancing at each other doubtfully, suspicious of a joke being made at their expense.

“A passenger?” Maggie asks. “Which passenger?”

“Some young guy,” Lucy says, looking back down at her tablet. “Someone called Mike? Mike Matthews?” — she glances at Conductor Jones next to her — “Is that right?”

“Right,” the conductor replies. “He’d arranged for breakfast in bed the night before, and when the chef couldn’t get his door open, I tried to unlock it, but it was chained on the inside. After calling for him several times, we got alarmed and broke the door in. That was, of course, when we found... the body.”

Maggie looks at Conductor Jones, struck again by his impassivity during his narration, before turning her attention back to Lucy.

“I’m guessing this is serious on more than one count, or you wouldn’t be getting personally involved.”

Lucy nods, her face bloodless and her voice strung high with tension. “Tensions between us and the Argonian government are already running high as it is. I don’t even know what would happen if we run into another jurisdiction dispute over this. We need to get this solved before such an argument starts.”

“What if we can’t?”

“You have to try,” Lucy says, taking the sparse occupants of the room in with her sweeping glance, looking exhausted and near-overwhelmed. “At least we’ve got authority on our side, for now. But, we need to get moving immediately.”

“The carriage in front of us,” Maggie says. “The one you were in. Is there any way—”

“No,” Lucy says, shaking her head. “We’ve done a headcount. All the officers were accounted for in their compartment, and it’s physically impossible for them to have moved to the second carriage. Even I wasn’t able to come over until the passage was cleared this morning. And the train hit the snowdrift at half past midnight, which made it impossible for anyone to get out of the train after that.”

“So, whoever the murderer is,” Maggie says, sharing a glance with James, “it’s someone from our carriage.”

“Or someone who broke in from outside,” he says, sounding as dubious about that alternate prospect as she feels.

“I’m almost relieved the storm took the lines down,” Lucy says, with a sigh. “Even so, we can’t prevent news of this getting out for much longer. We need to work fast.”

“It couldn’t be... suicide?” Maggie asks, biting her lips. “Considering the room was locked and chained from the inside.”

A very curious expression comes over Lucy’s face at the question.

“When you look at the body,” she says, “You’ll see what I mean when I say it’s definitely not a suicide.”

This, of course, raises Maggie’s curiosity immediately, but she stalls Lucy with a hand, when she moves towards the door.

“I’ve kept the room cordoned off for you until now,” Lucy says, looking surprised. “Don’t you want to see the body first?”

“Soon,” Maggie assures her. “But, first, I’d like to speak to Mike Matthews’ secretary.”

\---

 

**Interview 1**

**Subject:** Winn Schott, Secretary to Mike Matthews

Winn Schott comes in looking as nervous as ever, with that slightly awkward gait of his that causes Lucy  — still not initiated to the fact that this is his natural state of existence — to look at him suspiciously.

“Mr. Schott,” Maggie starts, as soon as he takes a seat. “I have some bad news. Your employer, Mike Matthews, is dead.”

As she studies him, Winn only releases a shaky breath, his face going ashy.

“So, they got him after all,” he says.

Maggie looks at him with mild surprise. “I didn’t say anyone got him.”

Winn looks even grayer.

“I mean”—he stumbles on his words—“I just assumed, I mean, he was so young, there’s no way... are you telling me he just died in his sleep?”

“No,” Maggie says. “Your first assumption was right. He was murdered. I’ve been assigned by Major Lane to investigate the case.”

Winn nods mutely.

“First things first,” Maggie says. “How long have you been his secretary?”

“A little under a year, since I ran into him in Metropolis.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I had just finished up a contract job there, and I was looking for my next gig,” Winn says, “I’m more of an IT guy, but I’m pretty good with languages, and Mr. Matthews needed a business secretary fast, so he hired me on.”

“And since then?”

“We travelled around,” Winn says, now shifting around a little in his seat, which makes Lucy glare at him even more suspiciously, which only makes him shift even more. “Mr. Matthews was always on the go, from city to city. I made reservations, kept in touch with his investment managers... just anything that came up, basically.”

“Fine,” Maggie says, changing tactics. “Tell me about your employer.”

Winn looks a little lost.

“Where do I start?” he asks.

“What was his name?”

“Mike Matthews.”

“That was his full name?”

Winn looks uneasy, as he shrugs. “That was the name he signed his business papers with, and the name I was told to give, when making reservations for him.”

“Where is he from?”

“America.”

“What part of America?” Maggie asks.

Winn shrugs again. “I don’t know. Like I said, he moved around, and we never really talked much.”

“Why?”

Winn’s voice is strung out and delicate as he replies, “He wasn’t really the talking kind. It was mostly loud beach parties and nightclubs all over the world. I just made sure he got out alive at the end of the night.”

He looks stricken after he blurts out those last words, and Maggie fights back a sympathetic smile, reminding herself that better detectives had been taken in by criminals who acted as hapless.

“Does he have any relatives?”

“No, both his parents passed away.”

Maggie nods, and circles back to her previous question. “Why did you immediately assume that he was murdered?”

Winn looks uneasy again.

“I just got the feeling that he was hiding something. I got the feeling that Mike Matthews wasn’t his real name, either. And then, a few months ago, he started getting some threatening letters.”

Maggie stifles her intake of breath.

“Physical or email?” she asks.

“Papers,” Winn says, and then. “Physical.”

“What did they say?”

“I can show you some,” he ventures.

At her nod, he leaves the compartment, followed silently by James, and returns with two papers in his hand, folded up and smudged.

Maggie looks at the letters on the table, and then up at James, who shakes his head.

“I can try to get fingerprints,” he says. “It looks too smudged up, though. I’d say it’s been handled too many times by different people to get us anything useful.”

Maggie gingerly lifts one of the letters open with the flat side of a pen so that she can read it. The letters are cut and pasted from newspaper clippings, pasted onto the dirty paper with unerring precision.

_ I know who you really are, what you look like, and where you're going to be. And you're going to find out who I am, real soon. _

And the other one:

_ You’ll pay for what your family did. I’ll get you. _

Maggie glances up at James again. He raises his eyebrows and shrugs.

“Doesn’t leave much to the imagination,” she says, and turns back to Winn. “How did Mr. Matthews react to this?”

“He laughed it off,” Winn says. “I got the feeling he was used to this kind of stuff. He told me that he’d considered hiring on a permanent bodyguard, once, but he thought someone like that might interfere with his lifestyle.”

“So, he wasn’t worried at all?”

‘I don’t know,” Winn replies. “He did have me make double reservations for plane trips after that, and would cancel at the last minute to take his private jet, sometimes. I got the feeling he was trying to be unpredictable.”

Maggie nods.

“Since he came to me for help,” she says, throwing that reminder out there mostly for the sake of seeing how Winn would react, “I would say that he was definitely alarmed.”

She waits for another reluctant nod from him, before proceeding.

“What did you think of your employer, Mr. Schott?”

That seems to startle Winn.

“What?”

“I mean, tell me your own opinion of Mike Matthews,” Maggie explains.

Unlike previous answers, Winn seems to be choosing his words carefully this time around.

“I think he was...careless,” he says, in the end. “Careless about people, about money, about ...about life.”

The words are trite, but Maggie wonders if that might not have been the truest thing that he had told her in the entire interview.

“Thank you,” she says. “One last thing. When did you last see Mr. Matthews alive?”

“Last evening, about”—he thinks for a moment—“twenty minutes to eleven, I’d say. I went to discuss with him about replying to some business emails of his.”

Maggie frowns. “What emails?” 

“His bank calling about some business transactions. They take”—again, Winn stumbles over the reality of the situation—“ _ took _ care of all his investments for him. All he had to do was give his approval, or otherwise.”

“Can you write down your permanent address and phone number for me?”

Winn writes down a Metropolis apartment address and phone number for her, which Maggie makes a note to look into later, should the need arise. With that, the secretary leaves, looking as nervous as when he’d entered. Maggie looks at James, and then at Lucy, who had been a glowering shadow throughout the interview.

“What do you think?” Lucy asks, breaking her long silence.

“I’m confused about one thing,” James says. “If he’s everything that Winn said he was, what was Mike Matthews doing in a place like this? Argo Island isn’t exactly party central.”

“It could be a business trip on the downlow,” Maggie says. “We might need to ask Mr. Schott more about that, in a follow-up interview.”

“So you think he might have been lying?” Lucy asks, her eyes flickering back and both between the two of them.

Maggie shakes her head.

“He seems a little timid, or uncertain, but I don’t see any reason to immediately doubt him.”

“So he didn’t do it?” 

“I didn’t say that,” Maggie says.

Lucy looks a little disgruntled at that non-answer, so Maggie distracts her by circling back to her earlier offer.

“Why don’t we go see the body, now?”

\---

 

“One of our military physicians was in the other carriage, returning home for his vacation,” Lucy explains, as she leads the way to the dead man’s compartment. “I asked him to look over the body. He puts the time of death between midnight and 2am.”

The first thing that strikes Maggie as Lucy pushes open the door, is the freezing temperature of the compartment, owing to the window ajar on the far side. The second is the body itself, still laid out in the lower bunk of the compartment.

“I see what you meant,” she tells Lucy.

There is a stab wound over the heart, with near-surgical precision, deep and savage. Maggie notices a few other wounds around, but they are mostly shallow, nowhere near as deep as that one cut so precisely into the heart. The entire picture, though, is still gruesome to take in.

“Someone stood there and stabbed him again and again,” she says. “How many stab wounds are there?”

“I count at least six,” James says. “But that one”—he points to the cut into the heart, the one that had immediately caught Maggie’s attention—“ _ phew.” _

Maggie nods. As she studies the body further, her first impression changes.

“They’re different,” she says, surprised. “The stab wounds.”

“That’s what the physician said, too,” Lucy puts in. “But, how?”

“That one, the deepest cut, is precise,” Maggie says, pointing to the one at the heart. “The rest of these wounds, though? Mostly shallow, and even the deeper ones are aimless, not caring where they strike.”

“And the strength,” James puts in. “It’s like different levels of strength were used in each cut, making some of the wound shallow, and some deep. But why? How?”

“I’m asking you,” Lucy says.

Instead of answering her, Maggie walks back to inspect the deepest wound that had caught her attention previously.

“Is it just me or is there something odd about the angle of this?”

“You noticed that too?” James asks. “Yeah, that struck me as odd.”

“Odd how?” Lucy asks.

“Look, I’m right-handed,” Maggie says, taking her pen out, and holding it out like a knife. “See what happens if I try to stab at that angle.”

She maneuvers around the body with the makeshift knife, trying out various hand positions, until she matches the one that must have driven in the knife.

“If I drive it in backhanded, I can just about manage the angle of the thrust,” she says, demonstrating. “Even then, it’s a difficult angle. Why bother with that, when you can just drive it in straight?”

“Unless the murderer was left-handed,” James finishes for her. “Then, it would be the obvious angle to strike from.”

“So the murderer is left-handed!” Lucy says.

“Well... no,” Maggie says. “Some of these other cuts... they’d have been almost impossible to do left-handed, especially given that the bunk bed is nailed to the wall on the right side, and there’s a railing on the other side.”

Lucy looks annoyed.

“So you’re telling me the murderer struck at the body both haphazardly and precisely, both weakly and with great strength, and that they were both right-handed and left-handed,” she says. “Basically, you’re telling me nothing at all.”

“It gets better,” Maggie says. “Did your physician find anything odd about” —she indicates two of the wounds — “these?”

“Now that you mention it,” Lucy says, frowning. “He was puzzled about those. He thought they should have bled more, even if they are just shallow cuts.”

“Which suggests that he was already dead, for some time, when those cuts were made,” Maggie says. “But, why? Who would have hated someone enough to keep stabbing them after they were already dead?”

“Maybe they just came back to make sure they did the job right?” James jokes, before throwing a hand up in surrender as Lucy rounds on him, furious.

“James’ guess is as good as any,” Maggie remarks, briefly amused, and moves over to the bed before the major can start on her. “Let’s see what else we can find here, before we start jumping to conclusions.”

“There’s something else weird about these,” James says, as he snaps more photos. “The width of the wounds are smaller than your average knife wound.”

“A compact pen knife, maybe?” Maggie guesses, before turning back to Lucy. “Was anything in this compartment disturbed?”

“Other than what was needed for the physician to examine the body, no,” Lucy says, “I’ve kept everyone else out... hey, what are you doing?”

Maggie is too busy rifling through the bed sheets to answer her.

“Ah, here we go,” she says in satisfaction, pulling her hand from behind the pillow tucked against the far end of the bunk, and coming away with a small pistol, cradled between folds of bedsheet.

She smiles into the surprised faces of the other two.

“He showed it to me yesterday. I had a feeling he wouldn’t keep it far from him, even in sleep.”

“Could have blown his head off, fucking idiot,” Lucy says, before shaking her head. “Not that it matters now, I suppose.”

“No,” Maggie says, “But, it does raise an interesting question. Mr. Matthews was a fit man, with a gun in arm’s reach. Why didn’t he fight back against his attacker?”

“Good point,” James says, going back to the body and running a trained eye over it. “I can’t see a single defense wound.”

The three of them stare at each other mystified for moments, and then all eyes turn as one to the beer can that had been left out on the foldout table by the bed.

“Bet you anything that’s drugged,” Maggie says. “That would explain why he didn’t fight back, or go for the gun.”

Amidst the busy clicks of James snapping photos of the evidence, she looks around, struck again by the open window. A window left open during the night of a howling storm, in a room that was locked and sealed off in every other way. As she’s frowning at that, Lucy approaches her.

“There’s something else,” she says, taking a phone out of her pocket and handing it over to Maggie. “The physician found this by the bunk, and I got the secretary to unlock it. It’s the victim’s phone.”

Maggie scrolls down it, after some momentary hesitation.

“Anything useful?” Lucy asks, as she clicks away.

“He answers a work email at around five minutes to one, a one-sentence reply confirming a meeting,” Maggie says, scrolling down. “Then, a reply comes in from the other party at around half past one, but that goes unanswered.”

“The murderer could have deleted it,” Lucy suggests, “Or, the victim might’ve just decided to put off replying until the next morning.”

Maggie hums back an absent agreement, now scrolling down through the large swatches of text messages, discarding each text chain one by one, before scrolling up to the first one that had caught her interest, the one from someone called “Rayne”.

“Paydirt,” she murmurs, passing it to Lucy. “Read it.”

Lucy goes up through the text chain, looking more and more unimpressed.

“Reads like a booty call,” she says, at the end of it. “Who’s this Rayne? Someone you’ve heard of?”

“No, and that doesn’t matter,” Maggie says. “She’s obviously just the latest in his string of hookups. What matters is the time stamps on the messages. They were sexting continuously through the night, and then at 12.15, she sends him a final message that goes both unseen and unreplied.”

“But ...the email was answered at a quarter past one,” Lucy says slowly.

Maggie nods grimly, before turning to James.

“Here, Mr. Forensics,” she says, tossing the phone to him. “See what you can do about any deleted messages on it.”

“I can’t pull off anything major,” James says, taking the phone carefully, and giving it a doubtful look. “I don’t have my full kit with me. I’ll see what I can do, though.”

“Do you think there might be deleted messages from after 12.15, then?” Lucy asks, looking shrewdly between the two of them. “Why do you think that?”

Maggie shrugs, and thinks back to the noise from Mike’s compartment that had woken her up in the night. She  _ had _ been tired then, and disoriented, but she remembers clearly the time that had been glowing up at her from her phone.  _ Twenty three minutes to one. _

She gives up trying to figure that out for the moment, feeling her head running in circles trying to figure a timeline out. That would need some sitting down. Instead, she skims through the passport Lucy had passed her, again taken from the secretary.

She flips through the pages cursorily, noting that almost every single one is stamped with a visa. When she comes to the final page, the one with the identification details, her hands still. The name —  _ Michael M. Matthews —  _ catches her attention first, but Maggie soon passes over it, to stare at the photo. It’s an old one, from before he had gotten the beard and hipster glasses. She’s staring at it with open-mouthed surprise, when an exclamation comes from James.

“Look, there’s something peeking out from there—”

He’s kneeling and pulling something out from under the tiny space between the base of the bunk bed and floor, easing it out with his fingers inch by inch, until a yellow square of fabric comes into view.

“A handkerchief,” Lucy says, while Maggie kneels down and prods it with her pen. “What on earth?”

Maggie teases the handkerchief over, finding it to be spotlessly clean on both sides, except for a superficial covering of dust from being on the floor. On the side she had flipped over, there is a letter — a very ornate K — embroidered in green on the yellow fabric.

She looks up into Lucy’s troubled eyes. 

“There’s only one passenger on the train whose name starts with that letter,” Lucy says.

Maggie nods, ignoring for now the grating disbelief that came with that realization.  _ Kara Danvers. _

“You don’t look convinced,” Lucy says. “Why don’t you look convinced?”

At a loss of anything more to say, Maggie kneels down to the small space between the bed and the floor, from which James had dragged out the handkerchief. Her small hand slips between the gap easily, as she fumbles around for anything she can feel under there.

“What are you doing?” Lucy’s voice comes from above her.

Maggie scrabbles around in the gap, feeling nothing but cottons of dust, before giving up the attempt. She draws her hand back too quickly, and the space is so narrow that her knuckles scrape against the uncovered nails and raw wood lining the bottom of the bunk.

“Are you alright?” Lucy asks, looking concerned, as Maggie stifles an exclamation of pain. “What were you looking for down there?”

Maggie stares at her empty hand, at the palm covered with dust, the knuckles scraped raw, and the bloody cut now running across the length of her arm.

“For this,” she replies. “That space is barely large enough for my fingers to clear. We’re supposed to believe that this handkerchief got in there accidentally somewhere between last night and now?”

She shakes her head without waiting for Lucy’s answer, and she goes over to fiddle with the lock of the compartment door. When five minutes of fiddling with it confirms that the lock can indeed not be forced open, she walks over to the open window on the other side, staring out into the snowy embankment. James walks over to stand beside her, looking at her with curious eyes, that Maggie finds herself unable to meet.

“How could the murderer have possibly escaped, except by jumping out the open window?” asks Lucy from behind her.

She sounds hopeful, eager to accept that easy solution. Maggie just shakes her head, feeling both unsatisfied by that possibility, and guilty that no alternative presents itself to her that is less troubling.

“How else could it have happened?” Lucy persists, sounding frustrated now.

“I don’t know,” Maggie says, which seems to only stoke that frustration further.

As a peace offering, she rifles back through the passport that Lucy had given her, pausing once again on the photo that had caught her attention so.

“Here’s one thing I do know,” she says, passing the document back to Lucy, “I know the real identity of our victim.”

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to @Sralinchen for beta-ing this entire fic.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning in this chapter for mild descriptions of abusive and coercive behaviour.

“Michael Manuel Daxam,” Maggie says, to the surprise of the other two.

At this, Lucy flips back through the passport until she reaches the identification page.

“It says  _ Michael M. Matthews _ here.”

“His mother was remarried as a Matthews,” Maggie says. “I guess she had his surname legally changed, when she divorced his father, but Michael Daxam was the name I knew the dead man by.”

It had been that photo of his younger self, that had finally tipped off her memory.

“The name you knew him by?” Lucy echoes, looking at her in surprise.

“Not personally,” Maggie says. “Not well, either. They had a house in National City. Flashy one too, in the most expensive zip code in the state. I was assigned to patrol there, back when I started out.”

“Daxam,” Lucy says. “You said that name like it meant something.”

“Old money, from both sides of the family,” Maggie says. “That means exactly what you think it means. Both parents were first generation Europeans, fleeing civil war in their homeland. The father died a few years ago, I think, and the mother soon after. There was a rumour going around the beat that they were royalty. I think they were just rich... the kind of rich that could get them out of any kind of trouble.”

“And what kind of trouble did it buy them out of?” Lucy asks, getting to the crux of it with a directness that impresses Maggie.

“Lots,” she says. “The NCPD’s problems with that family started long before I entered the force. There were lots of stories about servants being abused, and undocumented workers being hired for subpar wages. Slave labor, basically. All hushed up, in the end, before I even graduated the academy. The son was different, though.”

“Different as in he disapproved of what his family did?” Lucy asks, her brows furrowed.

“I mean he subscribed to a different kind of vice,” Maggie says. “This was just around the time when I was first put on the beat. We started getting a new kind of calls from their house.”

“What kind of calls?”

“Girls,” Maggie says. “I’ll give him this much credit, he wasn’t alone. It was just that kind of post code. The expensive kind, where girls got used, and officers got called in, and nothing much ever came out of it. You got used to being called in for that kind of stuff, in that neighbourhood, but the Daxams stood out. One of us was out to that house almost every weekend. He was written up for just about everything short of straight up assault.”

She stifles the urge to sigh at those memories, and wonders if Michael Daxam had recognized her, after all. Had he kept quiet about it? Had it just been a ruse, his surprise over her being the detective?

No, Maggie thinks. All those years ago, she had just been another faceless rookie to him. People like Michael Daxam didn’t tend to remember people like her, for better or for worse.

“Don’t get me wrong,” She says, when Lucy’s face purples with anger until she looks like a thundercloud. “Not everyone on the force was a pushover. We did our best to get him. We even got him locked up, sometimes, but he was out before the paperwork even had time to dry. It was just one of those things”

“One of those things?” Lucy echoes, looking furious, and sounding so incredibly like the daughter of a powerful government official.

Maggie feels an irrational urge to hunker down and defend herself, and the institution that she had once been a part of. She stifles that urge with some effort, and continues, keeping her voice even.

“Most of the girls never pressed charges,” she says. “As for the ones who did, I’m pretty sure the Daxams knew someone high up in the force, because it was all cleared up before it ever got to court.”

It had been one of the reasons she had been relieved to finally be promoted to detective, and transferred to Gotham. It had felt heady, to finally have the power to investigate and bring closure to cases.

Until time had proved her wrong on that count too, Maggie thinks, a brittle smile flitting across her face before she controls it and turns her attention back to Lucy.

Lucy looks downright disgusted by now. Even James’ brow is furrowed. Maggie knows, from long experience of reading him, that he’s furious. 

“It’s like the murderer picked the perfect poster child to justify killing,” he says, his voice far lighter than his sentiments must be.

“How can you say that?” Lucy demands, rounding on him, and looking even more disgusted, if possible. 

James spreads his hands. 

“I’m just saying,” he replies, unmoved. “This guy seems like a waste of space.”

Maggie remains silent, sensing that this is the playing out of much deeper waters between the other two, waters she has no business to be wading in.

“So, that justifies murder?” Lucy fires back. “God, you sound just like my father. Torture is justified, if they’re the enemy. And now, murder is justified, if they’re a piece of shit human being?”

“You know I don’t agree with a lot of what your father says or does, Lucy,” James says, his voice tighter now. “Especially about that.”

Lucy’s mouth snaps shut, as if she’s wrestling with herself to not snap something back.

“Even if he is everything you say he is,” she says, after a deep breath, turning to Maggie, “We still have to find out who killed him. He still deserves justice.”

“Let’s start by interviewing everyone,” Maggie says, on cue. “I’m especially eager to hear the conductor’s account.”

\--

**Interview 2**

**Subject:** John Jones, conductor of the Argo Island Express

Conductor Jones is as laconic as ever in his interview, giving his answers to Maggie’s questions with a brevity that borders on hostile, despite his polite tone.

She starts out by questioning him on his service record, as well as requesting his full name and address. She had hoped the routine questions would put him at ease, but the man seems only to wind up tighter, as the interview progresses, and his answers come shorter.

“And now,” Maggie continues, undeterred by this. “Let’s review the events of last night.”

That gets her another brusque nod.

“When did Mr. Matthews go to bed?”

“Almost immediately after dinner. I made up his bed while he was in the dining car.”

“Did anybody else go into his compartment, afterwards?” Maggie asks.

“Only his secretary, Mr. Schott.”

“No one else went in?”

“No one that I know,” comes his firm answer.

“And that’s the last you heard or saw of him?”

“No, you forget that he rang his bell in the middle of the night,” the conductor says.

“Right,” Maggie, who hadn’t forgotten, says. “What exactly happened there?”

“I knocked at his door, but he called out and said that it was a mistake.”

“What were his exact words?” Maggie asks.

“Don’t worry about it. I just fell out of my bunk,” the conductor quotes.

He seems to lose some of his calm as Maggie stares at him. Once, his hand moves, as if to fidget, before he stills again.

“Fine,” Maggie says, more impressed by his self-control than she means to be. “You didn’t find that odd?”

“How so?” the conductor asks.

“I was sleeping in the room next door,” Maggie says. “I woke up when I heard the victim yell, but I didn’t hear the sound of impact, of him hitting the floor. The bunk bed has a railing on the exposed end, precisely to stop people from falling out. If a man of Mr. Matthew’s build had cleared that railing with enough force to fall out of the bed, it would have made a noise that I would definitely have heard.”

The conductor looks faintly puzzled at this.

“I’m only telling you what I heard, detective.”

“Ok, let’s move on,” Maggie says, consulting her notes again. “Where were you at a quarter past one last night?”

“At my seat in the corridor, of course,” the conductor says.

“You’re sure?” 

“Well,” the conductor says, some uncertainty entering his tone for the first time. “I went into the dining car to arrange some things for a few minutes. That was a little past one, but I’m not sure exactly when.”

“When did you return?”

“When Ms. Grant rang the bell to complain that there was a man in her room,” the conductor says. “Nothing to it, of course. I checked myself, and it was impossible for an intruder to hide in so small a space, or leave before I arrived without me noticing.”

“Ms. Grant’s compartment was on the opposite side of Mr. Matthews’ from mine,” Maggie notes, staring down at the page in her notes she had flipped to, which shows the breakdown of the carriage, and the compartment allocated to each passenger. “There seems to be an adjoining door in-between.”

“Correct,” the conductor says. “The door was locked on both sides. I checked, when Miss Grant called me in.”

“Did you hear or see anything else during the night?” Maggie asks. 

“Well, when I walked by Ms. In-Ze’s compartment, I heard her in there, talking with Mr. Matthews’ secretary about”- the conductor’s brow wrinkles — “beverages? I remember that she left his compartment a little before one, and headed for her own.”

“Anything else?” Maggie asks. 

“One of the passengers went to the bathroom at the far end, some time before two in the morning,” the man says. “They were wearing a dark tracksuit, I remember.”

“Nothing else besides that?” Maggie presses.

“Ah,” the man says, as if just having remembered something. “I remember you looking out of your door at some point, detective.”

“Yes, I was wondering if you’d caught that,” Maggie says. “I was startled by something heavy falling against my door. Do you have any idea what it could have been?”

This time, Conductor Jones stares at her with real surprise in his eyes.

“There was nothing. I am positive of that.”

Maggie frowns, and looks back down to her notes.

“If an intruder couldn’t have left the train after it hit the snowdrift,” James jumps in, “Is there any way that he could be hiding on the train right now?”

“Impossible,” the conductor says. “The entire train has been searched.”

“I had some officers go through it,” Lucy adds. “It really is impossible.”

“Alright,” Maggie says, abandoning that line of questioning for the moment, and tackling something else that had bothered her. “Did the train stop during the night before running into the snowdrift?”

“We stopped at the Kandor outpost for refuelling,” the conductor says.

“And when did the train start off again?”

“We should have started off two minutes before midnight,” the conductor says. “We were delayed until ten minutes past twelve, though, because of the blizzard.”

Maggie looks up at that.

“Did anyone go out of the carriage during that stop?” she asks.

“No,” the conductor says, sounding positive. “I was standing by the main exit. I would have seen anyone enter or leave.”

“There’s a side exit, though,” Maggie says. “The one by the restaurant car.”

“That one is always locked from the inside.”

“It wasn’t locked this morning,” Maggie says.

Conductor Jones looks surprised, before his face clears up.

“The snow drift!” he says. “One of the passengers must have opened it to look out at the snow.”

“Maybe,” Maggie says.

She takes the conductor through a few more questions, before dismissing him. Again, she chooses to finish with routine questions, to assuage his nerves. As the man stands up to leave, though, he seems just as tightly controlled as when he had entered the room.

“Don’t look so tense, man,” James puts in. “We’re just trying to get an idea of what’s going on. No one’s blaming you for any of this.”

If he had aimed to set the conductor at ease, the words seem to have little effect. The man looks as unmoved as ever, as he acknowledges James with a nod, before heading for the exit without further ado.

“Not much of a talker,” James remarks, as the door clicks shut behind him. “But, he’s probably just worried that we’re going to try to pin this on him.”

“I checked up on his work record,” Lucy says. “It’s exactly as he said. Three years, spotless, no remarkable incidents whatsoever. Not one of our recruits, but he came with impeccable references.”

“Isn’t that remarkable in itself?” Maggie asks. 

She ducks down to escape Lucy’s frowning scrutiny, and scrawls down a few more notes, as she continues.

“He may look mild, and he might not say much, but he’s been brave enough to conduct this train through one of the most dangerous passages in the world, and he’s done it flawlessly for three years now.”

Lucy looks unimpressed at that, which Maggie figures might come from the fact that she herself has spent the majority of her career stationed on Argo Island. To her, Conductor Jones’ service record might not be as intriguing as it is to Maggie.

“Let’s just continue with the interviews,” she suggests, turning back down to her notes. “Next, I was thinking we could interview—”

Just then, there’s a commotion outside, of two voices arguing rapidly, before the door is wrenched open, and a figure in familiar pastel hues rushes in.

“-Kara Danvers,” Maggie finishes, as the woman in question herself rushes to a stop in front of them, adjusting her glasses unconsciously.

\---

**Interview 3**

**Subject:** Kara Danvers, reporter at CatCo Worldwide

“I heard about Mike,” Kara practically exhales in one breath. “Is he really, is it true that he’s—”

She stops, and fiddles with her glasses again, while looking pleadingly from one of them to the other.

“He’s dead,” Maggie confirms, her voice coming softer than the businesslike tone that she had been going for.

All at once, the breath seems to go out of Kara. For a moment, Maggie thinks that she might collapse, but another inhaled breath has her standing tall again.

“Did you know him?” Maggie asks. 

Kara bites her lips.

“That was my ex-boyfriend,” she confesses, “At least, well, we used to date.”

Beside her, Maggie can feel Lucy stiffening up into a ramrod straight position, and James choking back a whistle. Kara simply looks miserable. She knows, Maggie can see just by looking at her, that volunteering that piece of information has vaulted her right to the top of the suspects list. 

Before she can pursue the inquiry further, the door slams open, and Alex Danvers blazes in, all fire and fury.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she growls, stalking over to them.

“Ms. Danvers, control your—” Lucy starts, standing up.

Alex barrels right past her, slamming to a stop in front of Maggie. There’s none of the calm on her face that had been there that morning, nor any uncertainty.

“She’s not speaking without a lawyer present,” she says. “You got that?”

“Who said she needed a lawyer?” Maggie asks.

“You think I don’t know how this works?” Alex retorts. “You think you can just walk in here and ruin her life, ruin  _ our _ lives, over some asshole whom she barely knew?”

“Ruin your lives?” Maggie echoes incredulously, goaded to a level of affront that she isn’t usually used to feeling, but which this woman seems to have drawn out of her easily. “I’m here to do a job asked of me. Your life has nothing to do with it.”

“Show me your badge,” Alex demands. “What jurisdiction do you have over this?”

Before Maggie can respond, thrown off her game as she is by the sudden feeling of affront that the woman had elicited from her, Lucy steps in.

“She’s here at my request,” she says. “I’ve asked her to investigate the case.”

Alex looks unimpressed. “And you are?”

“Major Lucy Lane,” Lucy says. “My father, General Samuel Lane, is in charge of the Argo Island zone. He wants this matter resolved sooner rather than later.”

Alex grits her teeth, and turns back to Maggie. “Stay away from my sister, Sawyer.”

“I’ll need to interview everyone on the train, so that would be impossible.”

“I’ll tell you what’s impossible—” Alex begins, but Kara is tugging at her sleeve.

“I’m sorry,” Kara tells Maggie. “You want this resolved quickly, I get it.”

Before Maggie can respond, she’s turning back to her sister, and some steel enters her voice.

“Alex, it’s ok,” she says. “She just wants to ask questions.”

“She’s trying to find out if you’re guilty,” Alex snaps. “How do you not get that?”

“Alex!” Kara says, sounding just as steely as before, and frustrated to boot. “This isn’t the time to be my big sister. I said it’s  _ fine. _ ”

Alex turns incredulous eyes on her, before going right back to glaring at Maggie.

“She was with me,” she says abruptly. “We were in the same compartment.”

“We’ll take your statement soon,” Maggie says. “But, first... your sister?”

She looks between the two of them expectantly. Kara gives Alex another stare, this one pleading, and Alex finally leaves the room. The door clicks whisper-soft behind her, a far cry from the slam that Maggie had been expecting.

“Where were you last night after dinner?” Maggie asks, going back to the list of questions in her notes, to ground herself.

“With my sister,” Kara says. “Or at least, I stopped by Miss Grant’s room first, to get some aspirin, because I usually get a headache in the evenings, and it helps with that. But, I was with my sister the whole time, after that.”

“That would be Alex Danvers?” Maggie asks, trying not to let her mouth twist around that name.

“Yes,” Kara says. “We were in our compartment. I had a TV show playing on my laptop, and Alex stayed up to watch.”

“When did you go to sleep?” 

“Around 1am.”

“And do you know the real identity of the victim?” Maggie asks, looking up and studying Kara intently at this point.

Kara nods, her face pale.

“Mike liked to go by his mother’s last name, when he was travelling,” she says. “He thought it would help him to avoid notice.”

Maggie files away that tidbit, and moves to the next information on the list.

“How long did you date the victim for?” 

“Around four months,” Kara says. “I met him last summer, at a release party that Lena — my friend — had thrown, when her company was introducing a new product. We dated that whole summer, but then—”

She shrugs and peters off, looking uneasy, but Maggie just waits.

“We broke up,” Kara says, in the end. “We wanted different things.”

“Who did the breaking up?” Maggie asks, as formal as she can make her tone. 

Kara looks even uneasier. 

“Me,” she says.

Maggie writes the answer down without comment, well aware that it’s the right one to give, and that there’s not much corroboration to it being the truth.

“When you said Lena, did you mean the Ms. Lena Luthor who is on this train currently?” 

“Yes,” Kara says, biting her lip.

“Did she join you on this trip?”

“No, Lena had business of her own, although she wouldn’t tell me what it was. Something about an NDA she had signed.”

Maggie nods, and flips the notebook shut.

“I think that’s all we need for now,” she says. “Thank you for your cooperation, Ms. Danvers.”

She leads Kara out of the room, and returns to peruse her notes, aware of James and Lucy discussing the case as she does so.

“I mean, there’s the obvious question,” James is saying. “Was she really the one to dump him, as she says, or was it the other way around?”

“He was the type to play the field, wasn’t he?” Lucy replies. “Maybe he played with the wrong girl, this time around.”

Maggie let their words wash around her, but she finds herself looking down unseeingly at her scribbles instead, flooded with the image in her mind of Kara confronting Alex. Somehow, the steel in Kara’s eyes had not surprised Maggie at the time. It had fit with Maggie’s last encounter of her.

But, she wonders now, does that fit with the profile of a woman who would murder a man for love?

\---

The question haunts her through the rest of the day, so much so that Maggie finds herself excusing herself from the dining car when Lucy calls a break for work, and going outside to seclude herself in the snow, while thinking over the details of the case. 

It’s as unseasonably bright outside as every other day she has spent on the island so far. The sky reflects as an unnatural shade of blue on the surface of the hardened snow, and Maggie stares at it, thinking of a body riddled with stab marks, a handkerchief out of its time, and the voice of a man overheard through a wall.

“You weren’t at lunch.” The abrupt words break the crisp winter silence, shattering her absorption in her thoughts.

Maggie jerks her head up, and finds herself face to face with the other Danvers sister, the one that she’s tried to keep out of her mind. Alex Danvers is glaring down at her, the very solidity of her presence proving the futility of such an attempt.

“Hello,” Maggie says, mostly to buy herself time, because all her brain can think of right then is that she had  _ not heard Alex approach.  _ “Come to give me your interview ahead of schedule?”

Alex is still glowering at her, just as she had during the standoff with Kara, but it’s not with hatred. Maggie can see that now. There’s anger there, yes, but not hate. If anything, there’s flickers of betrayal in her angry eyes, and hurt.

“Why can’t you leave this alone?” she asks. “Why is it so important for you to solve this?”

“You keep acting like I’m taking this case to spite you,” Maggie says, standing up to face her. “Or that I’m doing it for my own ego. You seem to be forgetting there’s a dead man lying in his compartment, and that his murderer is running loose on this train.”

Alex looks down, frowning at the ground now, instead of at her. Maggie feels that eerie sense of loss and affront again, and wonders at it. All she knows is that it has something to do with the flushed and captivated way that Alex had looked at her that morning, and the stark difference between that and the angry way that she’s looked at her since.

Which is ridiculous. How can one mourn the loss of something that never even started?

“And he was such a fine man, wasn’t he?” Alex asks.

Her voice is quiet, but it startles Maggie out of her thoughts, deep in them as she had been. When Alex looks at her again, there’s no anger there, anymore.

“My sister is the one that broke up with him,” Alex says, “I know you think she just said that to protect herself, but it’s true.”

“That’s your side,” Maggie says. “On the other side, we’ve got a dead man who can’t confirm or refute what you say.”

“But, she did,” Alex says. “She broke up with him, and Mike couldn’t stand it. I don’t think he even liked her that much. He just hated that he’d been dumped by her.”

“Where do you think telling me this is going to get you?” Maggie asks. “You know I’m going to have to go ahead with the investigation, regardless of what you tell me.”

“I’m telling you because I can see it in your eyes, when you look at her,” Alex says. “Studying her, evaluating her, like she’s capable of this murder. She isn’t.”

“But, you’d say that, wouldn’t you?” Maggie says, sadly.

This is her least favourite part of any case, the faith that an accused’s loved ones have, in the accused’s innocence. Alex Danvers, though, surprises her expectations.

“Let me finish,” she says. “ _ She _ isn’t capable of murder. But, me?”

She leans closer to Maggie, her face as expressionless as a tombstone. It’s a classic intimidation tactic, it’s cliched, it’s so fucking by the book, and it  _ works. _

“I’m a different story, detective.”

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to @Sralinchen for beta-ing this entire fic.


	5. Chapter 5

When Maggie heads back into the carriage, long after the rest of the passengers must have finished their lunch, Alex’s words are still ringing in her ears. She tries to tease them apart, hoping to find some hidden meaning behind the bravado. She returns to the same conclusion each time, though: there had been no bravado, and no hidden meaning. Alex had meant exactly what she said.

“Maggie!” 

Maggie turns to see James beckoning her into their compartment.

“Lucy is preparing the restaurant car for the rest of the interviews,” he says. “Before we go over there, I was looking over Daxam’s phone like you asked me to.”

“Anything good?” Maggie asks, instantly alert, all thoughts of Alex fleeing her mind.

“The main chat log looked alright, when I downloaded it,” he says. “But, the phone seems to back everything up, every few hours. When I downloaded a backup log, there was a small difference between the backup log and the main chat log.”

As he says this, he opens up another file on his laptop. Maggie looks at the file, which seems to be strings of meaningless letters, with some decipherable phrases interspersed in between. As she squints at the mass of data, James highlights a specific phrase in the midst of the jumble.

“ _ Remember Alura Zorelle, _ ” he reads out. “That’s the conversation thread that was deleted from the main chat log.”

“Just those three words?” Maggie asks. “Did Daxam give any reply?”

“None that I could find, and I dug pretty deep,” James says. “All I can say for sure is, this three-word text came in last night to a brand new message thread, it went unanswered, and was then deleted by someone who clearly hoped no one would find it again.”

“Do we know the time the text came in?”

“I don’t know exactly when, because I can’t find the timestamp from a deleted log,” James says. “But, in the sequence of backup logs, the text comes before the last of the texts from the person called Rayne. By comparing it against the timestamps of those texts, I pinned down the deleted text as being sent a few minutes before midnight.”

“And whose fingerprints were on the phone?” Maggie asks.

“Only Daxam’s, and the secretary’s,” James says. “Winn did say he handled most of the business correspondence.”

“That’s a wash, then,” Maggie says. “Which leaves us only one avenue to investigate: who is Alura Zorelle, and why was her name so important that it was sent to the dead man in remembrance, and then deleted before we could find it?”

As she’s frowning at the phone, puzzling over it, James makes a sound of annoyance. Maggie looks up to find him poking a finger through a frayed hole in his coat, looking dismayed.

“I must have torn it when I was climbing up the snowbank yesterday morning,” he says, frowning. “Damn, this was my favourite jacket.”

Maggie, remembering the jacket to be the one that his father had bought him right before his death, reaches out and pats his shoulder. Just then, there’s a knock on the door, and Lucy walks in without waiting for their acknowledgement.

“I’ve got the dining car cleared again, for the rest of your interviews,” she says, before either of them can greet her. “Let’s hope we get something better than the interviews from this morning.”

\---

 

“I was thinking we could start with Cat Grant,” Lucy says, as she leads the way into the restaurant car. “Word is she’s going around telling everybody who’ll listen that the murderer was in her room.”

“Of course she is,” Maggie says, sighing. “I’d like to call the secretary back for a moment, though. I want to question him about what James found.”

Winn Schott, however, turns out to be mystified by the deleted messages.

“I, um, I did answer his business correspondence,” he stammers out. “I rarely checked his messages, though. They were usually personal stuff.”

“Did you give the deceased his drink, before you left his compartment?”

“I saw him take out a can of beer to drink,” Winn says. “I left before he opened it, though.”

“And what did you do after you left his compartment?”

“I went straight to my own,” Winn says. “I was chatting in there with Miss In-Ze, until pretty late into the night. I used to be a barista in college, and I don’t think she’s familiar with American drinks, so she was pretty interested in learning how to make the fancier kind of lattes.”

“Lattes?” Maggie asks, skeptical that the unlikely pair could have talked all night about that even more unlikely topic.

“Yes?” offers Winn, hunching down in a way that makes him look guiltier than ever. “She said she had a niece who was fond of them, and she wanted to learn to make them for her, so I was giving her some pointers.”

“And you never left your compartment?” Maggie asks.

“Well,” Winn hesitates. “Astra wanted to look at the blizzard, so we went out when the train stopped at Kandor. We came back inside pretty soon, though. It was way too cold out there.”

“By which door?”

“The side exit, the one by the dining car.”

“Was it locked before you went out?” Maggie asks, and waits for his nod, before continuing. “Did you lock it when you came back in?”

Winn’s face falls.

“Now that you mention it, we didn’t,” he says, looking stricken. “It just... never crossed my mind.”

Maggie shares a look with James, who nods back minutely.

“Fine,” she says. “You’re dismissed for now, Mr. Schott.”

“We can’t just take his word for it,” Lucy argues, turning to Maggie as soon as the door closes behind Winn. “He was the only one with easy access to the phone, and we have only his word for it that he left before his boss opened the drink.”

“Only Daxam’s fingerprints were found on the can,” Maggie says. “Plus, Mr. Schott worked in IT, in his last job. If he had deleted the message, he’d have made sure to go back and delete the backup logs.”

Unless that was what he wanted us to think, she adds to herself, but doesn’t mention that to the other two.

“Let’s get Ms. Grant in here, before she decides to hold a one-man trial for the murder herself.”

\---

 

**Interview 4**

**Subject:** Cat Grant, CEO of CatCo Worldwide

“Well,” Cat Grant comments, as she walks into the room, “I suppose if they had to waste my time with this investigation, at least they have a competent detective running it. Or, I assume you’re competent, if your record in the NCPD is any indication.”

Maggie, who had been expecting a caustic remark, exchanges glances with Lucy — who looks as surprised as her — before looking back at the woman who had spoken.

“You know who I am?” Maggie asks.

“I didn’t know immediately, of course,” Cat says, taking the chair in front of her without being asked. “But, after my assistant told me you were some kind of detective, it clicked. You made the headlines of my newspapers, you know that?”

Maggie just stares at her.

“When you made that public challenge to Roulette,” Cat explains. She leans forward. “That was a few years ago, wasn’t it? Tell me, how has she not managed to kill you yet?”

“It’s not my death we’re here to talk about,” Maggie says.

“Pity,” Cat says, conversationally. “Did you know one of her goons almost put a bullet through me, when I was investigating an exotic animal fight ring she had been organizing? This was years ago, of course, back when I still worked for the Daily Planet. But, you’re right, detective. We’re here about young Mr. Daxam’s death. Ask me what you like.”

Maggie, who had been writing down everything by habit, looks up abruptly.

“So, you know who he really was.”

“I’m the press,” Cat says, giving her a thin smile. “Of course I know who he was, even if his mother tried very hard to make sure that his doings never got into the papers, when she was alive.”

Maggie’s hand stalls on the paper. “What doings?”

Cat flaps her hands dismissively.

“That’s tabloid fodder,” she says. “Nothing that the Tribune or CatCo Magazine would write about. His various flings, the arrests, that sort of thing. Not that I ever followed them avidly, but it’s hard to completely ignore them, when my company is headquartered right in National City.”

Lucy, silent so far, makes a noise of displeasure, and Cat turns to study her.

“You disapprove?” she asks. 

“Please stay on topic, Miss Grant,” Maggie says, before Lucy can fire back. “Can you tell me a little bit about why you were on this train?”

“The Tribune is looking to do a series on life in the American military,” Cat says. “I figured Argo City was as good an outpost to begin my research as any, and brought along one of my reporters with me.”

“Kara Danvers,” Maggie says, and Cat nods.

“That’s correct.”

“You called for the conductor last night,” Maggie says, after consulting her notes again. “Can you tell me a little bit about what happened?”

“There was someone in my room,” Cat says. “I tried to tell that oaf of a conductor, but it was clear he thought I was making it up.”

“Were you?” Lucy cuts in.

Maggie winces, but Cat doesn’t fly off the deep end, like she had imagined. Instead, she takes something out of her jacket pocket quite calmly, and places it on the table between them.

“I know ‘fake news’ is something people throw around all too easily these days,” she says. “But, I’m not in the habit of making things up. I found this button in my room, when I woke up today.”

Maggie gingerly prods the plastic disk that Cat had placed on the table with her pen, before sharing a worried glance with Lucy. The button is tri-coloured in a checkered pattern, the uniqueness of it indicating clearly what it is.

“That’s a button from a conductor’s uniform,” Lucy says, her face grim, as if she has started to take Cat seriously after all. 

“Told you so,” Cat says.

James rises up from his chair, carefully slotting the button into a plastic bag.

“Let me go find the conductor,” he tells Maggie in an undertone, waiting only for her nod before exiting. 

Maggie turns back to Cat Grant, who looks satisfied in a way that sets her teeth on edge.

“You didn’t see this button there before you went to bed?” she asks.

“Obviously not,” Cat says. “I would have noticed, otherwise.”

“It could have fallen off the conductor’s uniform, when he came in to search your uniform,” Maggie suggests. 

“Listen,” Cat says, so furious that her voice is barely audible now. “I was reading the CatCo news feed on my tablet last night, and when I went to sleep, I put the tablet on the little ledge by the window. Got that? Good. When the conductor came in to check my compartment, he checked under my bed, around the door, and then locked the adjoining door between me and the next compartment. He never went near that window. But, that button was lying on top of my tablet the next morning. What do you call that?”

“That, I call evidence,” Maggie replies.

This seems to appease Cat.

“It’s nice to have someone take this seriously for a change,” she says, sitting back. “You wouldn’t believe how the conductor went on and on about how I must have imagined everything.”

“Right,” Maggie says. “Well, we’re definitely taking everyone’s accounts seriously. Now, I need your help with a few more questions.”

“Fine,” Cat says, looking much calmer now. “Fire away, detective.”

“You asked the conductor to lock the adjoining door between your compartment and Mr. Daxam’s,” Maggie says. “Why didn’t you do it yourself, before you went to bed?”

“I did,” Cat replies, before uncharacteristic hesitation enters her voice. “Or rather, I thought I had.”

“Explain, please,” Maggie says.

“Well, my reporter — Keira — came by to borrow some aspirin,” Cat says. “She takes it in the evenings for headaches, but she’d apparently run out. I was already in bed by then, so I asked her to check that the adjoining door was locked.”

“I see,” Maggie writes down another note. “You didn’t check it yourself?”

“If Keira said it was locked, it was locked,” Cat says, coldly.

“Did you hear or see anything else last night, that would be of interest?” Maggie asks, switching tracks.

“No,” Cat says. “Well, unless you count that — well, no, that can’t have been anything, of course not—”

She subsides into murmurs, as if arguing with herself, while Maggie looks up, her attention piqued.

“Tell us everything, Miss Grant,” she says. “Anything you saw or heard could be of great assistance to us.”

“Well, it’s that girl, Lena,” Cat says. “Seems she went into that man ... Daxam’s compartment by accident last night. Her compartment is on the opposite end of the row, and she’d got her directions mixed up.”

“When was this?” Maggie asks.

“Right before my assistant came in to borrow the aspirin, it seems,” Cat says. “I heard her joining Keira, as they walked back to their compartments. Apparently, Daxam had been in the compartment when she walked in, and made some off-colour comment towards her.”

“What comment?”

“Something about her being his type but him not being hers, or something like that,” Cat says. “Whatever that means.”

Maggie frowns, but notes it down.

“You knew who Mr. Daxam was,” she says. “Did you ever know him personally, though?”

“I believe he dated Keira for a few months,” Cat says, shrugging as if she could care less. “You’ve interviewed her already, I presume. I saw him bring flowers to her office once or twice. He could be charming, I believe, when he wanted to be. I suppose the relationship fizzled out, but I don’t know the details.”

“Was Ms. Danvers very upset by the breakup, in your estimation?” Maggie presses.

“My employee’s personal lives are none of my business, detective,” Cat says, her mouth stretched into a thin line. “She performed her duties adequately, as usual.”

Maggie nods, writing down some more notes, before hesitating over the next question on her list.

“Do you do yoga, or any physical activity?” she asks.

“Why, are you leading a class?” Cat asks. “If so, your marketing strategy needs some work.”

“You don’t own a tracksuit then, by any chance?” Maggie asks, refusing to take the bait. “Black, athletic cut.”

“Definitely not,” Cat says.

“Fine,” Maggie says, and moves to the last — and most recently added — question on her list. “Do you know of an Alura Zorelle?”

“No,” Cat replies, managing to look unmoved and bored at once. “Sounds like a name out of some tacky fantasy book. Even George R. R. Martin could think up something better than that, surely.”

“You may go, Miss Grant,” Maggie says, stifling her urge to sigh. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

\---

 

James returns shortly after Cat Grant leaves, shakes his head as Maggie and Lucy look up, and places the plastic baggie with the button back on the table.

“Conductor Jones’ coat doesn’t have a button missing,” he says. “I checked his replacement coat, too. Then I talked to the officers who sweeped the carriage, and they said they never found another coat of that kind on the entire carriage.”

“So, we’ve got a magical button that appeared out of nowhere,” Maggie deadpans. “I’m not even surprised, at this point.”

Just then, the clack of heels sound outside the dining car. The noise stops right in front of the door, as if the person is waiting to be let in.

“Let’s table the button for now,” Maggie says, and calls Lena Luthor in.

\---

 

**Interview 5**

**Subject:** Lena Luthor, CEO of LCorp

Lena Luthor answers Maggie’s preliminary questions about her identity and address with a practised ease, as if she’s done it before. As with Conductor Jones, those routine questions do not seem to put her at ease. On the contrary, while her expression remains composed, her face pales as Maggie continues with each question, as if being found guilty is something she considers a foregone conclusion.

“Where were you last night?” Maggie asks, giving up on the attempt to set her at ease, and proceeding to the real questions that she needs answered.

“I went to my compartment after dinner,” Lena says. “I was in a video conference with my executive team until a little past 1am, about a merger we’ve been working on.”

“That’s a long meeting,” Maggie says.

“It’s a big merger,” Lena replies, with a slight smile that doesn’t warm up her face.

“And yet, you’re all the way out here, travelling to the middle of nowhere,” Maggie notes.

“For business reasons,” Lena says. “I’m not willing to reveal the details, not until after a discussion with my lawyers, whom you know I won’t be able to get a hold of until the lines are back up.”

“I can accept that for now,” Maggie says. “Was your room shut for this conference? I ask because Miss In-Ze claims she was able to hear you.”

“No, I left the door slightly open,” Lena says.

“You’re on the far end of the carriage,” Maggie says, flipping her notebook back to her sketch of the train’s layout. “You’d have noticed anyone entering from that side of the train, then.”

“There was no one.”

Maggie notes that down.

“Miss Grant tells me that you accidentally went into the victim’s room last night,” she says, when she looks back up. 

“Briefly,” Lena says. “I mistook it for my own, and walked in to see him talking with his secretary. The secretary was just going out, and I left right after him.”

“Ms. Grant also mentioned that the victim said something to you.”

Lena’s lips twist. “That’s right.”

“The nature of his words seems to indicate that you knew him previously,” Maggie says. “Did you have any contact with Mr. Matthews, née Daxam?”

“Had any contact with him?” Lena’s lip curls. “He practically wouldn’t leave me alone, once he started dating Kara, and found out that I was one of her best friends.”

“Is that how you met, then?” Maggie probes. “Through Ms. Kara Danvers?”

“Oh, he and I were aware of each other’s existence before that,” Lena says, with a shrug. “His mother was on the board of directors of Lex — my brother’s — company, before it was shut down. I never talked to him, though, until Kara started dating him.”

“What did you mean, previously, when you said that he wouldn’t leave you alone?”

Maggie’s question gets a roll of startlingly green eyes, the gesture directed at the ceiling rather than at her.

“He was just, constantly trying to prove himself against me,” Lena says. “Showing up to my outings with Kara, trying to one up me when buying presents for her birthday, that kind of stuff. And, once he found out I was gay and Kara was bisexual?” — She shrugs. — “He went even more off the deep end.”

“Please explain what you mean by that,” Maggie says.

Lena looks annoyed, but complies.

“Once, we had a sleepover, and he had Kara put her phone on speaker for the entire length of it,” 

She swallows, looks out of the window of the compartment, and her voice is barely a whisper, as she continues. 

“She argued with him, but I heard him giving her some sob story about missing her voice, and she went ahead and did it. It may sound like a little thing, detective, but it was a pattern of little things.”

Maggie looks down, and pretends to be writing down extensive notes, giving her time to recover. Next to her, Lucy is looking down too, silent as a shadow. When Maggie looks up again, Lena’s face is devoid of all emotion. The crack in her voice might as well have been imagined.

“Do u own a black tracksuit?” Maggie continues.

“No, that’s not mine,” Lena replies.

Maggie looks up. “Your answer implies that you know that such a tracksuit exists, even if it’s not your own.”

“Well, I woke up early this morning with the idea that the train had been standing still for a while,” Lena says, frowning. “I opened the door to my compartment, and looked out to see why we’d stopped, and I remember vaguely seeing someone in a tracksuit make their way down the corridor.”

“Can you describe the figure?”

“Black-haired and tall,” Lena replies. “Or, well, they might have just had a dark beanie on. It was too dark, and I wasn’t really awake yet.”

“Could you make out the build?” Maggie asks.

“Tall and slim, I think,” Lena says, squinting as if she’s trying to remember. “Like I said, it was too dark to make out anything clearly.”

“Do you know of an Alura Zorelle?” Maggie asks. 

Lena shakes her head, now looking confused.

“That’s an odd name,” she ventures. “Are they a celebrity? I’m not really up-to-date on popular culture.”

“That’s fine,” Maggie says, closing her notebook. “That’s all for now, Ms. Luthor. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Lena Luthor leaves the room as silently as she had entered it, leaving Maggie staring at Lucy and James in turn, trying to gauge their reactions to the woman.

“Even if she provided us with footage of the video conference,” James says, “a hundred bucks says she’s in every second of the footage.”

“Can it be faked?” Maggie asks.

“She’d be stupid to give us footage that can be easily faked, and she doesn’t strike me as stupid,” James says, with a shrug. “That’s assuming we can even detect the fakery in time.”

“We’ll have to table that for now, too,” Maggie says. “I have a more pressing question. She never really gave me a clear reason as to why she was on this train, in the first place.”

Lucy, who’d been silently observing the two of them until then, clears her throat.

“She was here at the invitation of my father,” she says. “He’s been after her for a while, about some defense contracts that he had with her brother’s company, which Ms. Luthor discontinued after he went to prison and his company was dissolved. My father has been trying to follow up with her about those for some years now, but this is the first time that she’s actually agreed to meet with him.”

Maggie frowns. “Her brother went to prison?”

“Lex Luthor,” Lucy says, as if the name should mean something to Maggie. “Indicted for... well, it was a complicated case, but it was for treason, basically. I can provide you the details later, if you need them, but it’s not exactly the sort of MO you’re looking for, here.”

“Besides, she’s kind of the black sheep of her family,” James adds in. “Didn’t really get along with her brother or mother, and word is she’s trying to turn the family business away from the defense industry into the healthcare sector.”

“Like how?” Maggie asks, surprised. “And how do you know this?”

“She funds a lot of startup pharma companies working on cures for rare diseases,” James explains. “The kind that are fatal, but not common enough to get a lot of funding, otherwise. I remember reading a profile on her investments in the Daily Planet, once.”

“She must have at least a passing knowledge of medicine, then,” Maggie surmises. “She doesn’t strike me as the person who goes into a venture blind.”

Lucy and James both eye her askance, and Maggie stares down at her notebook to avoid their study, trying not to linger on the first thought that had occurred to her after that surmise.

Michael Daxam’s drink had been drugged, on the very night that Lena Luthor had apparently stumbled into his room by accident.

\---

 

**Interview 6**

**Subject:** Astra In-Ze

Their next suspect is lounging around in her chair while being interviewed, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that she’s under suspicion for a murder.

“May I have your name, for the record?”

“Astra.”

Maggie looks up when nothing further is forthcoming.

“In-Ze,” the last part is dragged out grudgingly.

Further inquiries for an address has Astra giving her the address of an apartment in Gotham City that makes Maggie blink a little.

“A dangerous location,” she comments, as she writes it down.

Astra is smiling by the time she looks up again.

“Not for me,” Somehow, the smile manages to be both amused and threatening.

“Did you know the deceased?” Maggie asks, undeterred.

“For the past two nights, yes. Before that? No.”

“And where were you, last night?”

“I was talking with that young man... Winslow,” Astra says. “We stayed up until near dawn. He was explaining some coffee drinks to me. I was unfamiliar with such things but Winn managed to explain it to me satisfactorily. I now know how to make both a pumpkin spiced latte and a cappuccino.”

She looks rather proud of herself as she says that, but it’s another part of her answer that Maggie finds herself puzzled by.

“What do you mean you were unfamiliar with such things?” she asks.

Astra looks stymied at that, before her face clears.

“Because I had not encountered such things before,” she says, drawing the answer out slowly.

“On account of being new to the country?” Maggie says, noting again the strong accent.

“On account of having been in mostly solitary confinement, in a maximum security prison, for fifteen years,” Astra says blandly.

Maggie writes it down, trying not to let her surprise show on her face. When she looks back up, Astra is regarding her with some amusement.

“It was an American prison. I was there for killing five men,” she says. “I’m sure the records are there, somewhere, if you care to look.”

Maggie’s eyes must have widened, because the woman’s smile widens in turn.

“Well, no one is perfect, detective.”

“You’re very open about it,” Maggie says.

Astra shrugs. “You’d have found out one way or another.”

“Right,” Maggie says, again resisting the urge to sigh, and very aware of Lucy frozen still beside her. “Did you hear anything unusual last night, while you were talking with Mr. Schott?”

Astra looks up, her cheekbones becoming more pronounced as her mouth screws up into a frown. 

“Nothing besides the incessant murmur of that young lady in the next room talking into her computer, and the computer talking back to her,” she says. Her face screws up even further in confusion. “She said it was a ...video conference?”

“Was there ever a pause in that sound?”

Astra considers. “Not for more than a few seconds at a time, in between conversations.”

“And, when did the conversation die down?”

“Let me see,” Astra says. “Well, I left Winn’s room for my own compartment a little before one, and I remember the murmurs dying down around that time.”

Maggie shares a look with james. That’s as good a confirmation of Lena’s words as they’re going to get, short of video evidence.

“Did you see or hear anything else?” she asks.

“No.”

“Does the name Alura Zorelle mean anything to you?”

“Oh,” Astra’s eyes light up, and the bored expression leaves her face. “Oh yes, of course!”

Maggie sits up straight. “It does?”

She’s aware of Lucy freezing beside her again, and James sucking in a hushed breath.

“You’re talking about the man in those children’s books, yes?” Astra says, looking from one of them to the other. “The headmaster, the one with the long white beard and purple robes? My niece was fond of those books. She used to write to me about them all the time, when I was in Fort Rozz.”

A moment of mystified silence, and then-

“Do you mean Albus Dumbledore?” Lucy asks in a scandalized tone, as James sags back in his chair. “How could you, how does anyone mix up—”

“Nevermind, let’s forget the question,” Maggie cuts in, before things escalate. “Thank you for your cooperation, Miss In-Ze. We’ll call you if we need anything else.”

Astra takes both Lucy’s indignance and her own dismissal in stride, with a gleam in her eyes that leads Maggie to wonder just how much of her obliviousness is real.

“If that’s all, detectives,” she nods at Maggie and James, then turns to Lucy. “Major.”

With that, she leaves.

“How does she not know Harry Potter?” Lucy demands.

“More importantly, are we taking bets on her being the murderer?” James asks, only half-jokingly, as the door closes behind the woman. “‘Cause a prison sentence is one hell of a bombshell to drop on an investigation.”

“We’ll need to check up on her statement,” Maggie says, looking at Lucy who’s already pulling out her phone, and shaking her head at it.

“We can check as soon as the lines come back up,” she says, before thumbing over the on-screen clock. “I need to report back to the officer’s carriage before nightfall. Have we interviewed everyone?”

Maggie glances out the window, at the rapidly darkening sky.

“No, there’s one person left,” she says. “You go on, Major Lane. We can handle this one.”

Lucy looks between the two of them for one hesitant moment, before nodding and leaving the room. Maggie drums her fingers on her notebook, and glances out the window again for some minutes after her departure, before looking back at James.

“It  _ is _ getting dark,” she comments. “You should go get your things in order before dinner.”

James balks. “And leave you to do the last interview on your own? Come on, Maggie. You know the procedure.”

“I know,” Maggie says. “Just... trust me on this one, ok? I’ve got a feeling about this.”

“She could be dangerous.”

“I think she  _ is  _ dangerous,” Maggie says. “If she wants to do me in, though, she had the perfect opportunity this afternoon, and she didn’t take it. I’m safe, James. I’m just going to be asking her a few questions.”

James looks ready to argue, before nodding and gathering his camera and notebook.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he says, leaving the dining car on that ominous note.

Maggie inhales deeply, wondering the same thing herself, before calling Alex Danvers in.

\---

 

**Interview 7**

**Subject:** Alex Danvers

Maggie hadn’t expected Alex Danvers to be any less recalcitrant during her own interview, and is therefore not surprised to find her being as obstinate and standoffish as ever.

“Do you stand by your statement that you were with your sister all of last night?”

“Yes,” Alex says. “We were watching a show, so you can cross her off your suspects list. My sister was too busy crying her eyes out last night at Ed Stark getting his head cut off, to be killing anybody else.”

“Your sister was crying about what?” Maggie interjects, looking up and wondering what on earth she’s talking about.

“It was in the show,” Alex says, waving it away and looking at her just as oddly as Maggie must be looking at her. “You’ve never seen Game of Thrones?”

Maggie shakes her head, and goes back to writing down notes. 

“But you still suspect her, don’t you?” Alex prods. “Nothing I say will be enough.”

“I can’t depend only on what people say,” Maggie replies. “It’s truth I’m looking for, not testimonies.”

“The truth?” Alex asks, exhaling sharply in what might have been an attempt at laughter. “The truth is that piece of shit deserved it.”

“You’ve said that already.”

“And we’ve already established that you won’t believe what I say.”

“Can you give me your address?” Maggie asks, brushing that aside, and trying to steer the interview back to calmer waters.

Alex gives her the same addresses that Kara had given, of an apartment in National City, and a permanent address in Midvale. When Maggie finishes jotting it down, she looks up to see Alex fixated on her free hand.

“What happened to it?” Alex asks, frowning and inclining her head toward the raw knuckles.

“Accident,” Maggie says. “I’m the one asking the questions.”

“You should take care of it,” Alex says. “It could get infected, if you let it go untreated.”

Maggie eyes her bland expression with suspicion.

“Is that some kind of roundabout threat?”

“Seriously?” Alex scoffs, actually looking hurt now. “It was just a recommendation.”

So, she had been serious? Maggie feels like her head is spinning just from trying to understand this woman, who seems to switch gears with a speed that makes her dizzy.

And, well, maybe a little intrigued, too. Like from the thrill of a really good chase.

“Did you hear anything odd last night?” she continues.

“Not until I went to sleep,” Alex says. “I got up sometime after to close the window, because it was open a little, and the snow was coming through. Just as I was sliding it shut, I saw someone outside, on the snowbank.”

“Who did you see?”

“No one I recognized,” Alex says, with a shrug. “All I could make out was that it was a tall figure and slim. Seemed to have dark hair, but it might have just been a cap. At that time, I thought it was one of the conductors stepping out to look at the train.”

Conductor Jones is certainly tall, Maggie thinks to herself, as she writes down Alex’s statement, but he’s built like a barrel. No one would mistake him for a slim figure, against the stark snow. As far as she remembers, the two conductors from the other carriages are rather short, and stout.

“Do you know what time this was?”

Alex shrugs again. “A little after two? I wasn’t keeping track.”

“Alright,” Maggie says, and makes a few more notes, before springing her final question. “Do you know an Alura Zorelle?”

Alex doesn’t blink, but a muscle in her jaw starts working.

“No.”

Maggie keeps staring at her, but she doesn’t look away.

“Are you sure there isn’t anything else relevant to the case, that you’d like to tell me?” Maggie asks. 

Alex smiles, managing to look smug and furious at the same time.

“Find out.”

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to @Sralinchen for beta-ing this entire fic.


	6. Chapter 6

“Here,” James announces to Maggie, as he walks into their compartment the next morning. “I knew you might not want to come in for breakfast, so I got you your usual mess.”

“Hater,” Maggie says mildly, as she takes the bagel and juice box he’s holding out, before turning back to her notebook.

“Get anywhere?” James asks, as she scribbles something out, and writes something else in its place.

Maggie shakes her head, before looking up from her notes to find James watching her oddly.

“What?” she asks.

James shakes his head fast, and starts shovelling the last of the eggs and bacon into his mouth.

“Nofeng,” he says, through a mouthful, eyes now fixed on his plate.

Maggie sighs. “James, just say it.”

“It’s just,” James says, swallowing and still looking reluctant. “We’ve interviewed every single suspect and we don’t seem to be close to a solution. I know Lucy’s getting worried, even though she’s trying to hide it.”

“Not everyone,” Maggie says.

“What?” James asks.

“We haven’t interviewed every suspect,” she says. “There’s one person who’s been conspicuously missing from our roster.”

James looks at her with some surprise.

“Lucy?” he ventures. “Me? _You?_ ”

“Look at what we have so far,” Maggie says, shaking her head. “We’ve got a bunch of contradictory evidence, everyone seems to have an alibi for the night of the murder, and every clue we find seems to be pointing to a different suspect, but there is one thing that everyone conveniently agrees on: a tall figure, that might or might not be slim, whose hair might or might not be black. That’s the person we need to find.”

“Oh come on, that’s just one of the passengers,” James protests. “Any of them could fit that build from a distance, or in the dark.”

“You might be right,” Maggie says, “or you might not. It all depends.”

“On what?”

“On timing.”

She passes the sheet of paper that she’d been writing on to him. “Look at this. I’ve made up a timeline of the events we should consider.”

  * **_10.40_ ** — Lena Luthor goes into Daxam’s compartment by accident.
  * **_10.42_ ** — Winn Schott leaves Daxam’s compartment for the night.
  * **_10.44_ ** — Lena Luthor leaves Daxam’s compartment. She’s the last person to report seeing him alive.
  * **_0.10_ ** — Train leaves Kandor outpost (delayed)
  * **_0.30_ ** — Train runs into snowdrift
  * **_0.37_ ** — Daxam’s bell rings and the conductor answers it
  * **_0.56_ ** — Daxam replies to a business email.
  * **_1.17_ ** — Cat Grant thinks someone is in her compartment, and rings for the conductor. When the conductor checks her compartment it’s empty, but the adjoining door to Daxam’s room is unlocked.



“It seems obvious by this, doesn’t it?” James says, when he finishes reading the list, and looks up at her. “But, I know it’s all wrong, because you’re not saying anything.”

“What seems obvious to you?” Maggie asks.

“It’s obvious, according to this timeline, when the murder was committed, and how,” James says. “We just need to figure out by whom.”

“You think so?”

James groans. “No, I don’t think so. Because you keep looking worried, and you’d have said something already, if you were sure of what happened.”

“But, suppose that what you think happened, _is_ what happened,” Maggie says. “How did it happen?”

“Simple,” James says. “We already know the murder happened sometime after one in the morning, because of the email and what you heard in his compartment. The murderer hides in Ms. Grant’s compartment. He goes in through the adjoining unlocked door, stabs Daxam, then exits by the window.”

“He can’t exit by the window,” Maggie says. “The train ran into the snowdrift at 12.30. No one could get out after that.”

“Damn it, you’re right,” James says, but he only looks stymied for a moment, before snapping his fingers. “The figure in the tracksuit you saw! That must have been the murderer.”

“Okay, but what about the name, then?” Maggie asks. “How does Alura Zorelle tie into it?”

“That’s the easiest part!” James says, triumphantly. “He’s a womanizer. That’s probably the name of one of the girls he was with. Maybe we’ve got a vengeful ex on our hands, or a family member.”

“You’ve got this all figured out really well, for someone who doesn’t believe any of it to be true,” Maggie says, laughing a little at the uncharacteristic exuberance that suffusess James’ face, as he enthuses over his idea.

“You’re right, I don’t believe it to be true,” James says, sobering up. “Because you don’t look convinced, and because that still doesn’t tell us who the murderer is.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Come on, throw me a bone,” James says. “We need to come up with something soon. Lucy told me the lines will be back up and running soon, and then she’ll have to report this to her father. It won’t be too long before the rest of the world knows, either.”

“I know,” Maggie sighs. “Honestly, I’ll be glad when the lines are back up. I have a couple of calls I need to make, if we’re ever going to get to the bottom of this.”

“But, Lucy didn’t want news of this getting out,” James says, looking concerned.

“They’ll be discreet, and I won’t tell them the details,” Maggie assures him. “Before you head out for breakfast, though, here’s the bone you asked for.”

She gives the timeline back at him.

“But we’ve already—” James starts.

“Yes, we’ve already discussed it,” Maggie says. “And there’s one thing we’ve taken for granted: that the murder happened some minutes past one.”

“What are you saying?”

Maggie thinks of a text message that had gone unanswered, of the sound of a body hitting the floor, and shakes her head.

“What if it didn’t?”

\---

 

Maggie skips lunch again, knowing that her entrance would make the affair uncomfortable, and that James would pester her about her new theory all throughout it.

She goes outside, with the idea of teasing out her new theory, and figuring out what the next steps are to take in the investigation. It’s not the case, though, that her thoughts keep returning to.

_Why is it so important for you to solve this?_

The truth is, it isn’t. Does she care one bit that a man like Michael Daxam is dead? If it weren’t for Lucy’s dire prediction of an international incident, would she even have agreed to take this case on?

She shakes her head, before her thoughts head too far down that rabbit hole. What use is it to wonder things like that? She’d never have taken such things into consideration, in her old routine. Then again, things had changed on that front over the past few years-

Maggie sighs, realizing that her brain is once again going in circles, unable to focus on the one thing it _needs_ to focus on.

“Trying to figure out where the mystery man went?”

The voice cuts through her meandering thoughts like butter, and Maggie looks up, not at all surprised, this time, that she hadn’t heard Alex approach.

“No,” she says, because nothing cleverer comes to mind, and she’s not really in the mood to think something clever up. “I’m not.”

Alex’s face lights up with a ghost of a smle.

“Shame,” she says. “I was thinking we could use a little excitement around here, being cooped up like this and all.”

Only the comical lilt to her eyebrows gives away the sarcasm. She sounds very different from the combative way she had answered Maggie’s questions during her interview. She sounds, in fact, like she had when they had first met.

Alex seems to sense her doubt, because she sinks to the ground by Maggie. The bright sun throws the hollows under her eyes into sharp relief. It looks skull-like, against the jet black of her sweater.

“Look, I’m sorry,” she sighs. “I got a little... fine, a _lot_ carried away, last night. It was a lot, especially seeing Kara come under fire.”

“Everyone on this train is under suspicion,” Maggie says. “Your sister isn’t being singled out.”

“I know,” Alex says. “I _know_ , ok? I had a talk with Kara about it. She calmed me down. Made me realize I haven’t exactly been fair to you.”

“What, one talk with your sister made you realize all that?” Maggie asks, lip twitching. “She give TED talks in her free time, or something?”

“Let’s just say, she has a powerful effect on people,” Alex says. “And, I guess, on me.”

She definitely sounds more mellow, compared to how jittery and keyed up she had been during the interview. Is this the real Alex, then? Maggie wonders if that’s the case, or if she can trust anything that she’s seen so far.

Can she even trust what Alex is telling her right now?

The line of thought is discarded, and forgotten, by the sight of Alex taking out a metal tube of what looks like ointment, and holding it out to her expectantly.

“Here, a peace offering.”

Maggie just stares, mystified.

“Your hand,” Alex says. “It’s still all scraped up. You said it was an accident.”

Maggie blinks. “You remembered that?”

Without much thought to it, she finds herself accepting the ointment, only to have Alex pull away and open the tube herself.

Alex’s smile is thin, but her hands are gentle, as she carefully rolls Maggie’s jacket sleeve back, and inspects the length of the cut.

“You’re not the only one with a good memory, Maggie Sawyer.”

She slathers the ointment around the cut. The movements are still gentle, but the bite of the ointment makes Maggie wince nevertheless, which gets another unamused smile from Alex.

“Mild laceration going on here,” she says. “Why’d you leave this untreated for so long? You could have gotten an infection.”

Maggie doesn’t reply, feeling something odd well up inside her, at the concern in Alex’s voice. It’s stupid, she knows. Instinctual, even. Psychology says she’s projecting something she’s been yearning for into what is a one-time act of kindness, or manipulation.

That doesn’t mean Maggie’s response to it doesn’t exist.

“Where did you learn this?” she asks, watching the deft way Alex’s fingers are now twirling gauze around her arm.

Alex frowns, eyes still concentrated on her hand.

“Med school,” she says. “Stanford. Not that I graduated, mind you, but I know enough not to kill you.”

Maggie’s heart sinks, for reasons she’s not willing to explore.

“I was joking about that last part,” Alex says, looking up at her silence. “You do know that, right?”

Maggie shakes her head, trying not to let her riotous emotions show on her face. A med school candidate. Who better to know how to put a human body into a stupor with a dosage of the right drug? Put together with all her other suspicious behaviour, Alex might as well have come to her with cuffs around her hands. Does she _want_ to become Maggie’s prime suspect?

Does Maggie care, if she does or not?

“So, did you get everything you wanted out of my sister?” Alex continues, oblivious to Maggie’s inner turmoil, as she finishes wrapping the gauze. “She says you grilled her pretty hard.”

“Your sister chose to cooperate with me,” Maggie says, snatching her hand back as if burned. “I didn’t force her to answer my questions.”

Why does that hurt so much? What does it _matter_ so much, what this strange woman thinks of her?

“My sister cooperated with you because she believes that the law is fair and justice wins out,” Alex says.

“And you don’t?” Maggie asks, though it’s more of a statement than a question.

“I know better,” Alex says.

Entirely gone is the fire she had displayed at their previous meeting. Her face is properly back into its melancholy set. The waning light throws deep hollows under her eyes, and Maggie is compelled to wonder what this woman had witnessed, that makes her reply in a voice of such conviction.

“And you do, too, don’t you?” Alex prompts.

Maggie raises her eyebrows, unwilling to rise to the bait by answering.

“Why else did you leave the force?”

Maggie hears the sharp intake of breath, and knows it to be her own, when Alex smiles.

“I know a little bit about you, Sawyer. You were a rising star at the GCPD, and then the NCPD. You were the one that took down the Inferno gang, weren’t you? And then, out of nowhere, a little less than four years ago, you make a very public challenge to Roulette, the woman behind the biggest undocumented immigrant trafficking ring on the West Coast. A few months later, you’ve arrested her. A day later, she’s let go. Another two months from that, it’s in all the papers that the lead detective on the Roulette case has resigned from the NCPD.”

Alex’s words seem to come as if from far away. Maggie finds herself transported back to that moment in the press conference, when she had stood up and issued that direct challenge to Sinclair. Had promised she would get her behind bars if it was the last thing she’d done. It had been a last ditch attempt to root her out, to anger her enough to make a mistake.

It hadn’t worked out.

“How do you know this?” she asks Alex. “No one, not even Miss Grant, could have told you all that.”

“Your service record is public record for anyone who knows where to look,” Alex says. “I’ve been following the Roulette case for some time. I recognized who you were long before Cat Grant or Conductor Jones told me.”

Maggie thinks of the way the woman had frowned at her at their very first meeting, seeming both taken aback and confused all at once, and has to fight the urge to sigh. How had she not caught that?

More importantly, why is Alex telling her this now?

“You may be right about my history, but that doesn’t mean I have to discuss it with you,” she says, aloud. “Roulette isn’t what matters here.”

“You arrested her,” Alex says. Her voice isn’t gloating, now, and her eyes are soft and dark, lights dancing in them. “A woman who was involved in slavery and murder... maybe even worse. And then, they made you let her go. Maybe her lawyers pointed out a loophole in the law. Maybe you got orders from upper management that you couldn’t defy. But, _they made you let her go_.”

Maggie turns away. Alex voice dies out.

“You should go eat your dinner, Danvers,” Maggie says.

Her voice is calm, but her heart is hammering away so hard that she thinks Alex should surely feel it, through the air and flesh and dust that separate them.

“And you?” Alex retorts. “I noticed you weren’t at breakfast, either, or at dinner last night. Are you going to starve the whole time we’re here?”

There’s a dull ache in Maggie’s heart. She can’t remember the last time someone had noticed things like that about her. Can’t remember the last time it mattered to anyone, other than James when they’re working together on a case, whether she skipped dinner or not.

It seems like an exceptionally cruel joke that it happens in this situation.

“I’ll be in soon, Danvers.”

When she looks to her left again, Alex is gone, once more as quiet as a ghost.

\---

 

Lucy is absent from their carriage for most of the day, while Maggie and James compare notes, and continue to observe the behaviour of the passengers. It is in the evening, when Maggie is inspecting the snowbank by herself, that she finally spots Lucy making her way back towards them from the first carriage.

“They’ve got some of the lines up and running,” she says, handing over a bulky phone to Maggie. “They’re letting priority communications through for now, so you’ll need to use this one to make your calls.”

Maggie takes the proffered phone, noting that Lucy looks even more tense now than she had during the interviews from the previous night.

“Everything alright?” she asks. “Did you get in touch with your father?”

“Yes,” Lucy looks away. “He’s not happy, to say the least. Just... please find an explanation for all this, soon.”

Maggie nods, sensing that words would be of no comfort to Lucy, and moves further down the snowbank, to make her first call for the night.

It’s some time before the first callee picks up, answering in a bored voice.

“Welcome to Pizza Pizza Pizza. What can I get you today?”

“Had to arrange pizza delivery across the Atlantic,” Maggie replies. “Hello to you too, M’gann.”

“Maggie?” Her longtime associate M’gann M’orzz asks through the phone, dropping the put-upon voice.  “This isn’t your usual number.”

“Well, I’m not at my usual office,” Maggie says. “Far from it, actually.”

“Does that mean Lane let you get out of Argo alive, or not? I heard you already fixed his little problem for him.”

“I’m not out of the woods yet,” Maggie says, some sort of relief falling over her at M’gann’s familiarly irreverent turn of speech. “I need some help. We’ve run into a new case”

“What do you need?”

“They’ve got us on lockdown, here, so I need you to find something out for me,” Maggie says. “Couple of somethings, actually.”

M’gann makes a noise of acknowledgement, but is silent otherwise.

“Astra In-Ze,” Maggie continues. “She says she was an inmate of Fort Rozz for five years. Can you look up what you can find on her?”

“And the other thing?”

Maggie hesitates.

“Alex Danvers,” she says. “She gave her home address as Midvale. Let me know anything you can find out about her.”

“Is that all?” M’gann asks.

Maggie sighs. “Unfortunately, no, but I don’t think you can help me with the third one. I’ll have to contact our mutual friend in France for that inquiry.”

“The old girl at Interpol?” M’gann sounds amused, but it turns to concern by her next sentence. “What have you gotten yourself mixed up into now, Maggie? I heard they’ve got Veronica Sinclair arrested in National City. I thought you’d be there by now.”

“I got held up,” Maggie says. “I can’t tell you the details...not yet, at least.”

“Well... keep in touch,” M’gann says, and she sounds just a little worried.

By the time she’s done with the second call, she realizes that it’s almost time for the restaurant car to open again for dinner. Maggie’s stomach grumbles, but she hangs back. Going inside now means keeping a poker face with a group of people who all know that she’ll find one of them guilty of murder eventually.

Instead, she leans against the snowbank, and thinks some more. Maybe it’s the cold air making her nostalgic, or the call with M’gann, but she finds herself thinking of people who met at the wrong time to be right for each other.

Kate and herself, for instance. They’d met each other at the worst time possible. Maggie can only be grateful that they’ve salvaged a lasting friendship out of the smouldering wreck of the relationship that they’d tried.

She wonders if that’s the kind of relationship that Kara Danvers and Michael Daxam had had; just two people who had met at the wrong time for each other. Is that all there had been to the breakup, with everyone exaggerating the details afterwards, so that they became unrecognizable? Had Lena Luthor’s emotionally wracked testimony, or Alex’s angry one, been complete fabrications? A man could be a womanizer, and careless about others, without being guilty of the greater crimes they had accused him of.

In the end, only two people can confirm or deny the nature of the relationship. One of them is dead. The other has too many reasons to lie to her.

But maybe not the reasons she had originally assumed, Maggie thinks, exhaling sharply as a new idea dawns on her.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to @Sralinchen for beta-ing this entire fic.


	7. Chapter 7

When Maggie wakes up the next morning, there is already a response waiting for her, to the queries she’d sent M’gann. She reads it, then rereads it, before passing the phone to James, who’s doing his early morning pushups on the compartment floor.

“So that checks out,” he says, resting on one hand to read the length of the message, before passing it back to her. “What are you going to do about it, though?”

“Nothing before interviewing the suspects again,” Maggie says. “Where’s Lucy?”

James points out of the window, and Maggie walks over to see Lucy stalking outside on the snowbank, talking into her phone, and gesturing wildly as she talks.

“She’s been arguing with her dad since he got through this morning,” James says, as Maggie stares. “Apparently he wants to just arrest everyone on board the train, and deal with the consequences later. Like that’s going to go over well with the Argonian government.”

“Or the American press,” Maggie says, thinking of Cat Grant.

“I don’t think anything goes over well with them _,_ ” James says, yawning. “I’m going to go get breakfast. Call me if you need anything.”

Maggie nods, but goes back to rereading the texts from M’gann, as he exits. She’s still frowning over them, trying to figure out how to proceed, when Lucy herself walks into the compartment, looking harassed.

“Any new leads?” she asks without preamble, before sighing and running her fingers through her hair again. “It’s just, my father is getting impatient.”

She sounds apologetic rather than frustrated, and poses the question to Maggie almost deferentially.

“We’re getting there,” Maggie says, trying to comfort without promising more than she can deliver. “One of my leads just came in with some useful information. I’m hoping to hear back from the other by the afternoon.”

“Was it anything good?”

“Well,” Maggie hedges, “It’s definitely moving us forward.”

Lucy looks like she’s going to press further, before just nodding.

“Is everything ok?” Maggie asks, remembering from personal experience just how high-handed General Lane could be, sometimes. “That seemed like a pretty tense call, with your dad.”

“It’s nothing,” Lucy waves her concern off. “It’s just, it took me a lot just to persuade him to let us continue this on scene. I don’t know how much longer I can hold him off from doing something... well, ill-advised.”

“We’ll get there,” Maggie says.

Lucy looks skeptical, but seems mollified enough to nod. Just as she leaves the room, James returns, throwing a nervous look behind him at the exiting Lucy.

“She just came in to ask about the case,” Maggie says, when the questioning look turns to her.

“Got you breakfast again,” he says, nodding. “They’re not that bad in there, you know, murder suspects or not.”

“How was it?” Maggie asks, taking the proffered plate gratefully. “Anything interesting happen?”

“Well, the Danvers Sisters came in together,” James replies, screwing up his eyes as if trying to remember. “They grabbed some stuff for themselves, and an apple for Ms. Luthor. Then Ms. Jailbird came in and got a croissant and a latte. She chatted with Winn when he came in, but went back to her compartment alone, said she had some reading to do. Cat didn’t come in, but I don’t think she takes breakfast. Winn stuck around and we chatted for a while. You know, he’s a pretty cool guy, he fixed up my jacket for me!”

He proudly shows Maggie his previously torn jacket sleeve. There’s no hole in sight now, and only a faint line of stitching to indicate that there had ever been one.

“Winn sews?” Maggie asks, confused.

“Nah, he had some little handheld machine that did the stitches,” James says. “He told me that he invented it himself.”

“Oh,” Maggie says, frowning.

She’d thought the similarity in names were a remarkable coincidence. Maybe not.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” James asks. “You’ve got that look on your face again.”

“Nothing, just remembered an old case that I’d heard about,” Maggie says.

James eyes her curiously, but moves on when Maggie doesn’t say anything further.

“So, what else have we got, other than what M’gann dug up for us?”

“Danvers... the older one... it looks like she was telling the truth,” Maggie says, “I got Daxam’s travel itinerary from Winn, and compared it against Kara Danvers’ location assignments for CatCo. He was definitely following her. Everywhere she went on assignment, or even on vacation, he was there. I don’t have enough information on whether he actually met up with her at each location, but there’s a consistent pattern.”

James whistles.

“Not the other way around like we thought, then,” he says, looking surprised. “But, I still can’t see him as being a long-term commitment type of guy.”

Maggie shrugs.

“There’s a long shot possibility that they were both conspiring to meet in secret at each location,” she says. “That doesn’t strike me as likely, though.”

“You mean like, if their family didn’t approve, or something.”

Maggie snorts. “Her sister certainly didn’t. And I can’t see Daxam’s mother being thrilled about the attachment, considering his inheritance. But, that’s all just conjecture. What the facts tell us is that, wherever Kara went, Daxam wasn’t far behind.”

“Right. Anything else?”

“Well, I tried to have all their addresses verified,” Maggie says.

“And they check out?”

“Mostly,” Maggie says. “I think we definitely need to do another round of interviews, as soon as we can. Which means” — she looks at her sleep t-shirt and sighs- “ _I’m_ going to have to get changed.”

James nods, and disappears with their empty plates. Maggie goes to her open suitcase, pulling out the first shirt on the pile.

Instead, her hand comes away with an unfamiliar black tracksuit.

She doesn’t realize her exclamation of surprise is so loud, until James races back into the compartment, looking worried.

“Is everything alright?” He asks, breathless, before looking between her and the black piece of clothing with some confusion.

Maggie shakes her head, and carefully lays the garment over the lone desk in the compartment, before turning to him.

“It’s the black tracksuit,” she says, unable to keep the laughter from her voice. “Looks like we didn’t have to go looking for it, after all.”

\---

 

“The tracksuit was in your room?” Lucy asks Maggie, as the two of them clear the restaurant car for the second round of interviews.

Maggie nods. “They were nice enough to bring it right to me, whoever they were.”

“But, you were in there all night,” Lucy says, brow wrinkling. “Are you sure it wasn’t there yesterday?”

“Not when I changed before dinner.”

“Which means someone must have put it there during dinner.”

Maggie nods. “I was outside then, and James was in the restaurant car. We didn’t bother locking the compartment, it’s not like we keep anything important in there.”

In reality, she had also wanted to see, what — if anything — would happen, if the compartment were left unlocked, but Maggie keeps that part to herself.

“But, James said that everyone went out of the restaurant car at one time or another, during dinner,” Lucy says. “Any of them could have easily dropped that suit in your compartment.”

“Well, let’s look into it later,” Maggie says, casting an apprehensive look at the door of the dining car, outside of which the loud tapping of heels can be heard. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s our impatient first interviewee waiting outside.”

\---

 

**Interview 8**

**Subject:** Cat Grant

“Miss Grant, are you aware that a handkerchief was found in the compartment of the dead man?” Maggie asks.

“Was it?” Cat asks, flicking a disinterested eye over her. “I thought the man was only backwards in his attitude to women, not to fashion.”

“It wasn’t the victim’s,” Maggie says, pulling a photo of the handkerchief up on her phone, and passing it to her. “You’ll see that is has a clearly discernible ‘K’ embroidered at the corner of it.”

Cat’s eyes darken as she studies the photo, and her face is a muted thundercloud, when she practically shoves the phone back to Maggie.

“If you’re suggesting that Keira was behind this—” she begins.

“Oh, I’m suggesting nothing of that sort,” Maggie cuts in. “To begin with, Kara doesn’t seem the type to carry around monogrammed handkerchiefs.”

“Well, then,” Cat snaps out. “Why am I here, detective?”

“Because of your passport, Miss Grant. Something about it intrigued me.”

She swipes to a different photo on her phone, and passes it to Cat again, who inspects the screen for barely a second, this time, before tossing it back.

“I know what my own passport photo looks like,” she says. “Get to the point.”

“It’s not the photo I’m talking about, it’s the name,” Maggie says. “You’ve got your full name on your passport: Catherine Jane Grant. Or at least, anyone familiar with your nickname would assume your first name was Catherine.”

She taps at the screen.

“But, actually, there’s an odd smudge over the first letter. Looks pretty recent, too. That changes things. Is that a ‘C’ hiding under there? Or, is it a ‘K’?”

There’s a silence, as she looks up at Cat. Cat is silent as a stone, staring challengingly at Maggie, as if daring her to continue.

“It’s the second one, isn’t it?” Maggie says, finally. “Katherine?”

At this Cat looks up at the ceiling and sighs.

“My mother always did have an ego. She named me after herself, you know? Tacky, I’ve always thought, but there’s no accounting for taste.”

Maggie silently thumbs away the photo on her phone, and returns it to her pocket. By the time she looks back up, Cat is staring at her again, as unflappable as ever.

“That’s all for now, Miss Grant. Thank you for cooperating.”

“A handkerchief on the ground with my initial means nothing at all, detective,” Cat says, as she gets up, a parting shot.

“We’ll see,” Maggie replies.

\---

 

**Interview 9**

**Subject:** Lena Luthor

“Miss Luthor, you’ve been the CEO of LCorp for the past three years and four months,” Maggie says. “Is that correct?”

“We’ve established this already,” Lena says. “Did you call me here for a second interview just to rehash the obvious?”

“Before that, you used to work for Luthor Industries, your brother’s company,” Maggie continues, ignoring the impatience in her voice. “You only struck out on your own when it was shut down, after your brother’s arrest.”

“LCorp was always on my roadmap,” Lena says, tersely. “How I got there is inconsequential.”

“I disagree,” Maggie says, “It’s very consequential, when we consider the reasons for your brother’s arrest.”

“Do we have to go through this, detective?” Lena asks.

“Your brother was indicted for selling classified military secrets to a hostile power,” Maggie forges on, ignoring her pangs of guilt at Lena’s obvious unease. “A contract signed by him with agents of said foreign power, and an offshore bank account where the money was funnelled through in exchange for the secrets, were the proof used to put him behind bars, or am I remembering that wrong?”

“Did you call me here to drag out old crimes?” Lena asks, looking between Lucy, James and her. She looks betrayed. “My brother was tried and arrested for that years ago. There’s no need to drag this up now.”

“I think there is,” Maggie says. “Because, your brother wasn’t the one initially indicted for the crime, was it?”

Cold silence meets her question.

“The contracts that the prosecutors found were signed in your name,” she continues. “The offshore bank account was opened and operated under your identity.”

“Forgery,” Lena says. She looks tired, a woman far older than her years. “They were proved in court to be a forgery. We’ve been through this, detective.”

“Yes,” Maggie says. “Your brother had an unfortunate habit of taping everything, didn’t he? Including his business transactions.”

“And there were tapes of him discussing the deal with the investors and signing it, yes,” Lena says, her voice sharp. “Again, _we’ve been through this._ ”

“Then, I’ll get to the point,” Maggie says. “Those tapes were private, hidden in an off-the-grid security vault. Only your brother knew where it was. Who got you access to those tapes, Ms. Luthor?”

Lena’s jaw works, but the rest of her face remains impassive.

“I think you already know. It’s in the court files.”

“I’d still like confirmation.”

“Fine, it was Kara Danvers who got them,” Lena says, in a near-whisper. “To this day I don’t know how she got past my brother’s security, or who helped her do it, but she did. She risked her life to get those tapes. She could have released them to the public, I’m sure it would have made her career at CatCo skyrocket. Instead, she gave them to my lawyers. Does that satisfy you?”

“And those tapes proved your innocence.”

“My own mother set me up to take the fall, to keep my brother out of jail,” Lena says, her voice colourless. “If it weren’t for those tapes—”

She falls silent.

“In other words, Kara Danvers kept you out of prison,” Maggie says.

“Not just prison,” Lena says. “My brother almost got the death penalty, did they forget to tell you that part?”

“I see,” Maggie says, and she does, suddenly, more clearly than she has in the past two days.

“So you see, detective, I just about owe Kara my life,” Lena says, her smile brittle. “I would die for her.”

_But, would you kill for her?_

“Yes, I would.”

Maggie stares at her in surprise.

“The question was in your eyes,” Lena says. “And, there’s no real point in me hiding that now, is there?”

“That sounds awfully lot like a confession,” Maggie says.

“I’ve got a team of lawyers, the best money can buy, who can argue otherwise,” Lena says.

Her face looks resigned, though; the face of someone used to being accused, and of being found guilty.

\---

 

**Interview 10**

**Subject:** Winn Schott

“Mr. Schott, your full name on your passport is Winslow Schott,” Maggie says.

“Yes?” Winn ventures, looking nervous again.

“But, I’ve had a colleague look into your background,” Maggie says. “Your enrollment papers at NCU, show a Winslow Schott Junior enlisted in the IT stream. Care to explain the discrepancy?”

“It’s just a family thing,” Winn says, swallowing. “It doesn’t mean anything much.”

“Doesn’t it?” Maggie asks, noting his ashy face. “Can you tell me a little bit about your parents, Mr. Schott?”

Winn’s mouth works, but no sound comes out.

“Maggie...” James murmurs. “Maybe we should—”

“Would you like me to tell you?” Maggie asks Winn, talking right over James.

He stares back at her, obviously nervous, but defiant all the same.

“It was an old case a sergeant of mine from the GCPD told me about,” Maggie says. “He got it from a buddy of his at the Metropolis PD, about a guy they took in.”

A stifled exclamation of recognition comes from Lucy, but she remains quiet, as Maggie continues.

“The suspect terrorized Metropolis for six months by planting bombs in toys in stores all across Metropolis,” Maggie says. “It took a dedicated team, working around the clock, to finally bring him in. The arrest made national headlines. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

A stiff nod of Winn’s head is the answer she gets.

“They called him the Toyman, until they tracked him down,” Maggie says. “He was a genius inventor, who felt wronged over a business venture gone sour. The Toyman wasn’t his real name, of course. Care to guess the real name of the suspect, Mr. Schott?”

Winn looks downright terrified, as she turns that question on him.

“Maggie what are you doing?” James asks urgently. “What’s this all about?”

“Winslow Schott.”

Winn’s quiet voice cuts through James’ urgent one, leading to a pindrop silence for a moment afterwards.

“That’s what you wanted to hear, right?” Winn says, looking miserable. “You’re right. That was my father. Winslow Schott Senior.”

If Maggie had expected to be satisfied at his capitulation, all she feels when looking at Winn’s dejected face is the exact opposite. Almost, her resolve crumbles.

“That’s what I wanted to know,” she says, and her voice comes lower than the confident tone that she had been going for.

“Do we have to drag this out?” Winn asks. “Yes, my dad was a criminal, and yes my mother left us, when she found out. That doesn’t mean I did this!”

“I didn’t say you did, Mr. Schott,” Maggie says, “But, fine, let’s move on. You gave me an address in Metropolis as where you currently live. Would you call that accurate?”

“Of course,” Winn says. “I mean, I had to move around a lot with Mike, but—”

“But my research turned up something different,” Maggie speaks over him ruthlessly. “My research tells me that you might live in that location now, but your permanent address is something else entirely.”

“That’s not true,” Winn says, face pale.

“I think it is,” Maggie says. “You went to boarding school after your father’s arrest, and then to residence in college, but records show you returning to an address in Midvale for the holidays, every year. Your tax statements go to that address, too, every year. If I were to ask for your driver’s license right now, I’d bet good money the Midvale address is on that, too.”

No further protests issue from Winn.

“Have you got something to tell me?” Maggie prompts.

He stays silent.

“Fine, I’ll tell you,” Maggie says. “The address didn’t just trace to any random address in Midvale. It traced to the same address that both of the Danvers sisters gave me. Maybe their family took you in, or even adopted you—”

“No.” Winn’s voice is small. “Not adopted. Not officially, anyway.”

“Then what?” Maggie asks, pushing her remorse when he winces and looks away.

“Eliza Danvers... Alex’s mom... she used to be my dad’s coworker,” he says, looking down at his hands. “My dad left enough to put me through school, and college, but Eliza always made sure I had a place to come back to, during holidays. I don’t know why she cared, or bothered, but it was... it was almost like having a real family, again.”

Maggie feels out of breath all of a sudden, as if she’s been punched in the gut, or shot.

“A family,” she echoes, and her voice sounds strange even to herself. “Is that how you considered them, then?”

“They took me in when no one else even wanted to go near me,” Winn says. “Kara was the first friend I ever had, and my only one, for a long time, and even if Alex could be cold, she would still beat up anyone who tried to pick on me.”

“They made you feel welcome,” Maggie says. “You loved them.”

Obstinate silence, this time, in response to her question.

“Would you do anything for them?” she continues.

To that, Winn shrugs.

“They’re all I’ve got.”

“And that’s all I needed to know,” Maggie says. “Thank you for the cooperation, Mr. Schott. You may leave now.”

A hushed silence reigns, when Winn leaves.

“I think that’s all we have time for,” Maggie says, breaking it. “It’s time to clear the dining car for lunch, isn’t it, Major Lane?”

At Lucy’s nod of approval, she looks to her other side, to see James looking at her uncomfortably.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Maggie says. “You know this is part of the job.”

“Did we need to drag that out of him, though?” James asks. “That was obviously painful for the guy to relive. Is it even relevant to the case?”

Maggie purses her lips.

“We’ll see,” she says, for lack of a better reply.

“I’m going to go check on him,” James mutters, avoiding her eyes and abruptly rising from the table. “Dude didn’t look right.”

Maggie nods, though he’s already moving towards the door, instead of waiting for her okay.

“Is this part of the interview process?” Lucy asks, from behind her, sounding bemused. “Some sort of good cop bad cop thing?”

Maggie makes an answering noise that she hopes sounds neutral.

\---

 

She skips lunch again, choosing to walk the snowbank outside again, though another a storm is brewing. This time, though, it’s to avoid James, too, along with all the others.

This is part of the job. The mantra runs through Maggie’s head, as she stalks through the snow. Ruthlessly getting at the truth is part of the job, and so is empathy for the person on the other side, and that’s why she and James have made such a good team over the past few years.

It’s also part of what she’s always liked about James, what has always set him apart from the other detectives of the force. His ability to easily empathize with others, and gain their confidence in turn, is something that Maggie has always considered one of his greatest strengths.

She never expected that to rear its head in this way, though, to the point where empathy for a suspect would actually make James uncomfortable with her interview methods.

And the worst part is, alone out here, with only the snow to witness, Maggie has to admit that she cannot fault him for it.

After all, isn’t she guilty of having spent the entirety of last night tossing and turning in bed, apprehensive over the fate of one Alex Danvers?

She shakes her head, and debates calling M’gann to talk things out, before remembering what Lucy had said about prioritizing her calls.

It’s as she’s standing there, half-frozen in the worsening storm, that Maggie hears footsteps nearing. The first thought that springs into her mind is that it’s Alex. That hope, or apprehension, is dispelled immediately by Kara Danvers’ voice floating over her shoulder.

“Shouldn’t you be heading back inside by now? This is going to turn into a proper blizzard, soon.”

“I could ask the same of you,” Maggie says.

“I got curious as to what you keep doing outside here, while the rest of us are eating,” Kara says, adjusting her glasses again, and directing her crinkly smile at Maggie.

Maggie shrugs, feeling uncomfortable under the stare that’s so much more penetrating than it looks.

“It’s peaceful out here,” she says.

“That’s all?” Kara asks. “It has nothing to do with how your friend was clearly ignoring you this afternoon?”

Maggie looks at her sharply, only to see Kara kneeling down and playing with the soft tufts of newly fallen snow.

“It’s lonely, sometimes, isn’t it?” her voice floats up. “Doing the right thing, I mean.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?” Maggie asks, “Even if the right thing might be sending one of you, maybe yourself, to prison?”

Kara shrugs, as she straightens back up.

“The way I see it,” she says, “If you’re going to commit a crime, you might as well be prepared to pay the price for it. What’s the point of it, otherwise?”

Maggie studies her as she speaks, but unearths no bravado in her expression or tone, just a casual certainty that drives her words in all the more effectively.

“Your friend thinks differently, though, doesn’t he?” Kara guesses. “Winn told me what happened.”

“James has always been protective of his friends,” Maggie says, trying to choose her words carefully.

“Still, it must have been a surprise to you, to find him getting so attached to Winn,” Kara says.

Maggie shakes her head, but remains silent. In truth, Winn is exactly the sort of person James tends to get protective over. She should have seen it coming.

“Sometimes,” Kara muses, coming to stand by her. “Something we’ve condoned or overlooked all our lives comes into sharp relief, when it affects people we care about.”

Her voice sounds far away, nearly lost in the sound of the storm. Is she still talking about James, Maggie wonders, as she steals a sideways look at the woman, or about someone else altogether?

“Your friend kind of reminds me of Alex, in that way,” Kara says, out of the blue. “She’s like that, too.”

Maggie blinks, her train of deduction derailed.

“Your sister has already made her views on justice and murder clear to me,” she says, slowly, as she tries to work out what Kara is getting at. “I don’t think they align with James’, at all.”

“Oh, Alex is all bark,” Kara says, dismissively. “She’s gruff but that’s just, like, her natural state of being.”

“Is this something I’m just supposed to take your word for?” Maggie asks, wondering if this is some transparent attempt at trying to talk her out of suspecting Alex.

“No, she really is actually nice,” Kara says, looking wounded at Maggie’s skepticism. “It just takes her a while to open up to people.”

“You think she’ll open up to me?” Maggie asks, mystified.

Why would Alex do that, when it’s in her best interests to do the exact opposite? More importantly, why does Kara seem to think that’s a _good_ thing?

“She will!” Kara insists. “Look, Alex is like, um, like that movie with the onion layers?”

Maggie stares.

“With the ogre?” Kara ventures, before shaking her head. “Nevermind, I think I’m messing my metaphors up, Miss Grant is always telling me I am. Comes from being ESL.”

Maggie is still frowning, wondering what Kara is trying to get across to her, when it suddenly clicks, and she gapes. Kara isn’t talking about the case at all.

“Are you talking up your sister to me?” she asks, incredulously. “Your sister, who’s one of the people that I’m investigating for a murder ?”

Kara only has the grace to look a little sheepish.

“No time like the present, right?” she asks. “Seriously, though. Alex might look grumpy, but she’s a teddy bear inside.”

This is a hallucination borne of hunger and cold exposure, Maggie thinks. Nothing else explains the Twilight Zone she’s currently found herself in.

"You're out of line."

"Maybe." Kara shrugs. "But,  I'm sick of my sister throwing away her chances at happiness because she thinks she's not allowed to have them, or because she thinks it's unfair to me. If she's going to be stupid about this, I'm hoping you'll see reason, at least."

Maggie exhales a half-laugh, that's not as light-hearted as she wants it to be.

“She's one of my prime murder suspects,” she reminds Kara, for the second time. "So are you, for that fact."

“Well, nobody is perfect,” Kara says, in a philosophical tone.

While Maggie is frowning at the strangely familiar words, Kara’s stomach growls loudly enough to be heard through the storm.

“Oops.” Kara grimaces, before a half-embarrassed smile steals over her face. “Guess that sandwich from breakfast isn’t going to cut it. I better head back, before they clear the tables away.”

“You do that,” Maggie replies, still thrown by the entire arc of this conversation.

Kara flashes her another quick smile, before stomping back through the snow in the direction of the train. By the door, Maggie spies a distant figure waiting, holding the door open for her. Alex. For a moment, Maggie fancies that Alex is staring past Kara, that the distant gaze is directed at her.

 _Enough._ She shakes her head, and turns away. Just because her brain seems to have stuck on Alex Danvers, doesn’t mean she has to indulge it.

She continues to pace along the snowbank, trying to shift her thoughts away from exactly that subject, when the crack of the first bullet rends the air.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to @Sralinchen for beta-ing this entire fic.


	8. Chapter 8

Maggie dives for the ground at the first crack. A second crack pierces the air just as her face meets snow, followed by a piercing pain in her left arm.

Her mouth opens, her grunt of pain muffled into the snow, just as someone tackles her prone body, sending up another spike of pain.

“What the—”

“Stay down!” Alex Danvers’ voice hisses in her ear, her body impossibly solid over Maggie’s own, as she drags them both south of the snowbank, below and away from the direction the shots had come from.

Maggie hears screams and shouts, picks out James and Lucy’s voice among the cacophony, before another shot rings out. An arm weighs down on Maggie’s back, and she peeks up, to see both of Alex’s hands cradled around a handgun, balanced on Maggie’s back. Then, there’s another shout from James.

“Let go!” Maggie pushes up against Alex, grunting as the pain flares up again. “James, I’ve got to help him—”

“It’s fine,” Alex’s voice comes back, still sounding urgent. “They’ve got it. It’s fine.”

She lifts off Maggie then, and Maggie pushes herself up just in time to see Kara trying to run towards them, slipping and stumbling through the snow, before being restrained by Lucy and James.

“Alex!” she’s screaming, naked terror on her face, as she fights against their hold. “Alex!”

“I’m fine,” Alex calls out to her, and then shouts the words again, when Kara doesn’t stop flailing. “Just stay there, Kara! It’s not safe out here!”

Maggie stumbles in the snow, blinking away the pain, and focusing on walking towards where James and Lucy are waiting. She feels Alex clasp her right arm to steady her, in a gentler grip than she had expected, and lead her towards them.

“Easy, alright?” she’s murmuring, as if Maggie is an easily spooked farm animal.

The thought makes Maggie snort, and that makes her stumble again. Alex’s arm reaches to curve around her waist then, to steady her, still gentle.

“‘M fine,” Maggie mumbles.

“You’re not fine,” Alex replies, her voice terse again. “You were shot, and you’re bleeding. You should never have been out here.”

Maggie shakes her head, blinking again, as the pain takes over.

When she looks up, they’re in front of James and Lucy, and Kara is hurling herself forward to crush Alex in a bearhug, while James rushes forward to steady Maggie.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Kara is mumbling, still crushing Alex with her arms.

“Did you get them?” Alex asks over Kara’s shoulder, while she pats her sister’s arms bracingly.

Lucy nods, pale-faced. Her hands come away and fall to her side, and she tucks away the gun that she had been holding back into its holster, as she stares between Maggie and Alex.

“I’ve sent two officers to get the body,” she says. “Pretty clear the shooter was acting alone.”

Alex nods, as if she had expected as much, before stepping away from Kara and turning back to Maggie again. Both of the Danvers sisters glance at her, Alex with a frown and Kara with alarm.

“You’re bleeding!” Kara says. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”

“It just grazed me—” Maggie starts, but Alex is on her other side, herding her in before she can finish the sentence.

“Doesn’t change the fact that you’re bleeding,” she snaps.

“I’ll get the physician,” Lucy says, turning in the direction of the first carriage, before Alex puts her free hand up.

“I’ve got it,” she says.

Lucy looks hesitatingly between Maggie and her, until Maggie nods.

“Let’s just get it over with,” she says.

Alex frowns at her words, but leads Maggie to her compartment without further protest.

Maggie remains silent as the other woman cuts away her sleeve and works on the wound. She winces at the blood, so much for a surface wound, but Alex only frowns accusingly at her arm, as if it were an independently sapient limb responsible for its own injury.

“Stupid,” she mutters, as if to herself, as she sets about running a wet cloth over it.

Maggie smiles, and lets her gaze wander around the room as Alex works. The compartment is similar in size to the one she shares with James. The unmistakable signs of cohabitation with Kara are evident, from the clothes haphazardly thrown everywhere to the sticker-emblazoned laptop lying in the middle of the bottom bunk bed.

Her casually wandering gaze lands on Alex’s open medical kit, and moves away, before Maggie finds herself drawn back to it, her heart racing.

There, nestled in between a pair of bandage scissors and a set of suture needles, are three scalpels, all of them sparkling clean. It’s the third one of these that catches Maggie’s attention, and holds it. It’s the same width as the others, but its blade is longer, far longer than she’d have expected a surgical scalpel to be.

Almost the exact size as the blade of a standard pen knife. Maggie sucks a quick breath in through her tongue. Talk about hiding things in plain sight.

“What is it?” Alex asks, looking away from her work, apparently having sensed the sudden heightening of tension in the room.

Maggie looks at her, and back to the kit, with the scalpels in plain view. There’s no way Alex misses the direction of her gaze, any more than Maggie can miss those blades.

“How often do you clean your kit?” Maggie asks.

Alex’s jaw works.

“Often,” she says, helpful as ever. “Everything in there is surgically clean. It has to be.”

“I’ll bet.”

Alex stares at her, eyes narrowed, like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maggie lets her gaze move around the room again, like she hasn’t got a care in the world, until Alex goes back to dressing the wound.

When her eyes land on the compartment door again, she realizes there’s a shadow blocking the light seeping in through the opening, as if someone is standing outside.

“I think there’s someone—” she starts, shifting her position, only to have Alex grip her in place with her free hand.

“Hold on a moment,” Alex says, sounding absent-minded, she wraps the gauze around her arm. “You’re going to make it start bleeding again.”

Maggie falls still again, just as the door opens. Alex doesn’t seem to notice.

“Hey,” Lucy says, in a near-murmur. “Sorry to bother you, but James said you should see this right away.”

She pulls out her phone, and turns the screen towards Maggie.

“We found this on the shooter.”

On it is a photo of a piece of paper laid flat on a table, though it had clearly been folded over many times before. There are only three words on it.

_Veronica says hi._

There’s a sharp intake of breath from beside Maggie. When she looks at Alex, though, she’s still focused on Maggie’s arm.

Maggie looks back up at Lucy, answering her questioning look with a mystified shrug. Lucy meets that with a skeptical frown, before looking askance at the silent Alex. That seems to change her mind about whatever protest she’d been about to make.

“Fine, let’s talk about it later,” she says, before exiting the room.

Maggie glances at Alex again, as the door shuts behind Lucy. The woman unwraps the gauze and sets about cleaning the wound, her face not giving anything away. Maggie watches her for a while, wincing and trying to keep her grunts of pain to a minimum, though the cut isn’t deep enough to compare with some of the other hits she’s taken before, and the disinfectant doesn’t burn all that harshly.

“Why are you working with your right hand?” she asks.

Alex’s hand stills for a moment, and her throat works as if she’d meant to swallow and stopped the urge.

“Why wouldn’t I?” she asks.

“Out there, you were using your left as your shooting hand,” Maggie says.

“It would’ve been hard to fire right-handed in that direction.”

“You’re ambidextrous,” Maggie says, after a pause. She doesn’t phrase it as a question.

Alex washes her hands again, before continuing to bandage the arm, with slow preciseness.

Only then does she look up at Maggie, her eyes more vulnerable than Maggie had ever seen them.

“Why did it have to be you?”

Maggie can only stare back, caught in the desperation she sees there, and feeling equally troubled herself.

\---

 

James jumps up from his bed as soon as Maggie enters the compartment, as if he’d been waiting for her to enter all this time.

“Alex let you go?” he asks. “She said you were in a bad way.”

“I’m fine,” Maggie says, before grimacing as she remembers how much she’d had to argue with Alex just to be allowed to get out of bed. “I know you’re unsure about working the case with me anymore, but we need to at least talk about that letter.”

James shakes his head, and guides her to the bunk.

“None of that matters right now,” he says. “You’re hurt, and Alex is right. You need rest.”

“No,” Maggie says, vehemently shaking her head. “We can’t rest anymore, don’t you get it? We need to solve this case, because otherwise we’re going to be detained by General Lane along with the rest of the passengers. We’ll never get to National City in time to testify against Roulette.”

James heaves a quiet sigh into the silent compartment.

“Is that really such a bad thing?” he asks, after a beat. “This is the second time Roulette’s tried to kill you. Is it so bad if you sit this one out, and let the NCPD handle it themselves?”

“You really think it was her, then?” Maggie asks. “Not one of the passengers?”

“It’s Roulette’s MO to a T, and if any of the passengers has the kind of power to special-order a murder, we wouldn’t even be in this mess, would we?” James asks. “I think you agree with me, or you wouldn’t have sounded so urgent about solving the case, just now.”

Maggie considers denying the truth in his words, before just nodding.

“Don’t go,” James says. “You know she’ll try this again. You don’t owe the NCPD anything.”

“And you know it’s not that simple,” Maggie sighs. “I don’t testify, she walks free. Again.”

“Roulette is powerful enough that she sent an assassin to kill you all the way over here, while she’s behind bars in National City,” James argues. “Is this really who you want to go up against?”

“I don’t think wanting factors into this,” Maggie says, with finality, getting up.

“Where are you going?” James asks, looking alarmed.

“To the next interview,” Maggie says. “My other contact got back to me.”

But, James is already striding to the door before her, hitching his camera up as he walks.

“I thought you didn’t want to—” Maggie starts.

“I know I reacted badly, about Winn,” he says, looking at her, “but I know what I signed up for. I got you, alright? _I got you_.”

Maggie feels her throat tighten, as she looks up into his earnest face, at this man who’d once been her colleague, but is now simply her friend. Not something Maggie thought she was going to have again, after packing up and starting over again in a brand new city. Words fail her, so she simply nods.

“Let’s do this,” he says, seeming to understand her anyways.

Just as he opens the door for her, though, James jumps back, making Maggie stumble back too.

“What is it?” Maggie asks, wincing as the quick movement backwards makes her wounded arm sting.

“No it’s just—” James murmurs, and motions at the half-open door.

“What are you talking about?” Maggie pushes past his large frame to see what had stalled him, before stopping short, just as he had.

Waiting just outside the door, nervously adjusting her glasses again, is Kara Danvers.

\---

 

“Hello,” Kara says, shifting from leg to leg as she stares between Maggie and James. “I just wanted to see if Mag- um, if Detective Sawyer was ok.”

James looks from her to Maggie, and a light seems to go on in his eyes.

“Right,” he says. “Why don’t you come in and talk to her? I’m just off to prep the restaurant car for the rest of the interviews.”

Maggie shoots an exasperated look at him, as he leaves, and he replies with a conspiratorial wink. She turns back to Kara, impatience to continue the interviews warring with curiosity to hear what she has to say.

“Sorry if I’m making you late,” Kara says. “I really did just want to see if you were doing okay.”

“I’m fine,” Maggie says. “Well, no, I’m not, but I’ve had worse.”

Kara nods, as if she’d expected as much, before following Maggie’s waving hand into the compartment.

“I don’t want to delay you.”

“It’s fine,” Maggie says. “As it happens, I wanted to talk to you.”

Kara looks uncomfortable, and starts fiddling with her glasses again.

“No need for that,” Maggie says. “It’s not like you’re the prime suspect anymore.”

“Right,” Kara says, looking even more uncomfortable. “That’s my sister now, isn’t it?”

“Is that what you think?”

“It’s what _you_ think,” Kara says, looking hurt, and a little betrayed. “My sister saved your life!”

“I know,” Maggie says.

“Alex is a lot of things, but she’s not a remorseless killer.”

“Are you?”

The question seems to stop Kara in the middle of her nascent rant.  


“Am I?”

“It’s a simple question,” Maggie says. “Yes or no?”

“I’ve told you how I feel about murder,” Kara says.

“Yes, you have high ideals,” Maggie says. “Or, you say you do. I have to wonder, how many of them would you compromise for love?”

“Love?” Kara asks, with blazing eyes so furious that Maggie fancies literal sparks shooting out of them. “You think just because I love Mike, that I would just—”

“I don’t mean that kind of love,” Maggie cuts in. “I saw how you cried out for your sister today, Kara, when you thought she was in danger.”

Kara sighs, her anger abating as quick as it had come.

“I was so afraid she was going to get shot,” she says, her voice shaky. “Alex has been the only family I had, for a long time. If anything happened to her, I’d—”

She stops, and swallows.

“You were adopted by her family, weren’t you?” Maggie asks.

“We’ve never made a secret of that,” Kara says. “Alex’s parents took me in when I was _thirteen._ I don’t see how that could possibly be relevant now.”

“It might not be,” Maggie says. “Your adoption records are sealed, and I’m not going to go looking into them. Instead, I’m going to just ask you: what was your family name, before you were adopted?”

Kara shuffles her feet and looks down, sighing.

“Is it ok if I don’t reply to that?”

“Is it Zorelle?” Maggie asks.

Kara just keeps looking at the floor, seeming crestfallen.

“Nevermind,” Maggie says. “That’s not so important. You already confirmed what I really wanted to know.”

“Which is?” Kara asks, looking back up, her face puzzled.

  
“That you’d do anything for your family.”

There’s a pause, and then-

“Of course,” Kara says. “I’d protect Alex with my life.”

“Right,” Maggie says, although that hadn’t been exactly what she had meant.

Looking at Kara’s shuffling and awkward gait as she leaves, she thinks that maybe Kara knows that too.

\---

 

**Interview 11**

**Subject:** Cat Grant

James looks downright reluctant, when Maggie tells him who she plans to interview next.

“Do we really have to bring her in again?” he asks, in mock dismay, as they wait in the cleared restaurant car.

“I need to get some facts about her story straight,” Maggie says, unmoved, before she pokes him with her pen. “It’s not going to kill you.”

“Debatable,” James mutters, amicably. “Uh-oh, here she comes.”

He buries himself in his notes, as Cat Grant stalks into the room. Maggie, not so intimidated, still finds herself sitting up a little taller.

“Let’s get this over with,” Cat starts. “Why have you called me here for a third time?”

“New information has come up,” Maggie says. “I’ve called you here again to talk more about your interest in Mr. Daxam.”

“My interest?” Cat arches an eyebrow, so perfectly that Maggie wonders how many times she’s practised it. “I’ve never had any interest in _that,_ I assure you.”

“There are a lot of high-profile playboy socialites in National City,” Maggie says. “Your magazine has probably covered more of them than you’d care to admit. Why is it Mr. Daxam that you remember such specific details about?”

“Because, he was the victim,” Cat drawls out. “If you wanted to question me about Justin Bieber, I daresay I could’ve drudged up some details about him, too.”

“You don’t even know your own employee’s name, Miss Grant,” Maggie says. “I don’t think you’re the type of woman who remembers men like Mr. Daxam, unless they’re of particular interest to you.”

“What is it then?” Cat asks, looking unimpressed. “Are you about to accuse me of being secretly in love with him myself?”

“No,” Maggie says, her voice low and intense. “I’m not accusing anyone of anything... yet.”

She sees Cat about to try and interrupt again, but barrels right over her, in direct contrast to her previously relaxed interviews.

“No, don’t argue with me, Miss Grant. What is it about Mr. Daxam that caught your attention? You’re not the type to care who your assistant dates. Why did this man stick out in your mind?”

“Watch your tongue, detective,” Cat’s voice is low now, too, and as dangerous. “Or, you’ll be sending your next batch of interview questions to me through my lawyer.”

“Leslie Willis,” Maggie says, undeterred. “That’s the reason for your fixation on him, isn’t it?”

The commonplace name rings through the silent room like a hammer. Cat Grant smiles and looks away.

“This one’s on me, isn’t it?” she asks, after a while. “I asked for a competent detective, and they actually got one, this time.”

“Leslie Willis worked for you,” Maggie says. “She was your assistant, a few years before Kara.”

“All she was, is an idiot,” Cat snaps, but Maggie can see that the venom in her tongue isn’t directed at the girl under discussion. “As headstrong and stupid as they come.”

“Kara is headstrong, too,” Maggie reminds her. “I’ve only known her briefly, but even I can see that.”

“Well, yes,” Cat says, looking pensive. “She can be guided, but not forced.”

“Was Leslie Willis like that, too?”

“I said, she was an idiot!” Cat snaps again. Her mouth has shifted into unhappy lines, rather than angry ones. “Stubborn, and young, and of course, all too ready to date anyone her betters disapproved of.”

Maggie sighs. Now, at last, this unpredictable case seems to be shifting into familiar patterns.

“It was Mr. Daxam she dated,” she says, and continues without waiting for confirmation from Cat. “What did he do to her?”

“The usual,” Cat says, succinctly. “He took what he wanted, and then he left her high and dry. I’m sure I don’t need to illustrate.”

Maggie closes her eyes again.

“And you didn’t help her,” She says, keeping all judgement out of her voice.

“She’d already left CatCo by then,” Cat’s tone is a study in carelessness. “Some dispute or other; you can’t expect me to remember every employee I’ve fired. Silly girl. I don’t know what she thought, trusting that man to do right by her.”

“What happened to her?” Maggie asks, though she knows already. It had all been in the files that M’gann had sent over.

“Do we need to hash out the details?” Cat asks. “She was a headstrong idiot, but when she cared, she cared. Too much, maybe. Enough to be taken too early, by a young man’s carelessness and an old woman’s pride. It’s a story that’s played itself out many times before.”

“But, not again,” Maggie fills in. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

Cat smiles thinly.

“Why, do you think committing one sin absolves the commission of another?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie admits. “I don’t really care, either, but I think you do.”

Cat snorts.

“Oh yes, you do,” Maggie says. “That’s why you’re here, that’s why you’ve lied to me all this time, and that’s why that reporter of yours keeps looking at you askance all the time, as if she’s wondering if you truly are capable of murder.”

“Enough,” Cat’s voice is angry, and protective. “Leave Kara out of this.”

A tense silence follows, that Maggie uses to take some more notes down.

“Well,” she says, eventually, looking up and smiling at Cat. “Looks like you know her name after all, Miss Grant.”

\---

 

**Interview 12**

**Subject:** Astra In-Ze

“Your claim checks out, Miss In-Ze,” Maggie says without preamble, to begin her second interview. “Fort Rozz does have records of a prisoner by your name, stationed there during the time you mentioned.”

“That is because it is the truth, not a claim,” Astra replies sounding bored.

“I asked you before if you’d ever heard of an Alura Zorelle,” Maggie says. “You sidestepped the question, deliberately, I think.”

Astra only inclines her head in the universal “I’m listening” gesture.

“I asked you the question because the victim received a text message containing that name shortly before he died,” Maggie says. “It’s been puzzling me, until today.”

“When you suddenly received enlightenment after being shot in the arm?” Astra inquires.

“No, when I received information from one of my old friends at Interpol, about who the woman named Alura Zorelle was,” Maggie says.

Astra’s pose is as languid as ever, but Maggie notices the careful ease of her fingers on the armrest, watches the veins stand out for a moment, before the tension smoothes over again.

“I got the information through a cold investigation file that was relayed to me,” she says. “It considered the death of an Alura Zorelle, gunned down in her home in France. In Nice, to be specific. Her husband died with her. The police never found the four perpetrators responsible for the crime.”

There’s the momentary interplay of nerves on skin again.

“Their only child was out of the country visiting an aunt, or so it says in the file,” Maggie continues. “She survived. The records indicate that she was later adopted by family friends in America.”

“Are we trading bedtime stories now, detective?” Astra asks.

“Have you got a story to tell me, then?” Maggie asks.

“I would, but I suspect you’ve already heard it,” Astra says.

Maggie opens her mouth to say something, before thinking better of it, and going back to silently writing notes of the interview in her log. Before long, her hunch about what it would take to get Astra to talk is proven right.

“There were five gunmen, you know.”

The words are spoken in a melancholy tone, rather than the insouciant voice Astra had used earlier. Maggie looks up, her pen stalling.

“Five, not four, like the police thought,” Astra expands. “Two would have done just as well — Alura was unarmed — but I think it was Lar Gand Daxam’s idea of a joke. Krypton’s justice system was ruled by the High Council, of five councillors who passed judgment on the guilty. It must have seemed fitting, to him.”

“We’re not in Krypton,” Maggie says. “Neither was Alura.”

For the first time, she sees fury in Astra’s eyes, and the hint of a snarl around the lips.

“Sorry,” Maggie says, “But, it’s true. You know your country ate itself up in a civil war years ago.”

Fury subsides back into melancholy.

“So, you know that, too?”

“The fact that you were Kryptonian?” Maggie asks. “Yes. It was in your Fort Rozz records.”

“And I suppose I can’t deny your other statement either,” Astra says. “Considering my family was one of the main instigators of that war.”

“Krypton operated under a semi-feudal system, didn’t it?” Maggie asks, trying to remember what little she had studied of the — rather politically unimportant — European city-state, in her high school history lessons. “That was part of what had sparked the war, if I remember correctly. The neofeudalists going up against democrats?”

“Does it matter? Krypton is gone, one way or the other.”

“It matters that your house fought on opposing sides of the war to Lar Gand Daxam’s house,” Maggie says. “It matters that a woman called Alura considered the entire war to be horrific, and fled to France to marry the man she loved, and raise a child with him in peace. It matters that she was never allowed to do that.”

“That was Daxam’s doing, not mine! He fled like a coward, too, as soon as the deed was done.”

“She was your sister, wasn’t she?” Maggie asks, playing her trump card. “Alura, née In-Ze, later Zorelle, was your sister. That’s why Lar Gand had her killed.”

Astra barely seems to hear her. She’s staring at the table between them instead, with the same ferocity in her eyes that Maggie had seen in Kara’s earlier.

“But, I got them,” she says, still staring at the table’s surface, and talking as to herself. “I found all five of them, in the end. I could never manage to tie the crime to them, or to Lar Gand, but I knew, and that’s all that mattered. I had nothing to lose. I made sure they paid.”

 _But you did have someone to lose_ , Maggie thinks. _And you chose revenge over her._

“That’s why you were in Fort Rozz,” she says, shoving the thought aside for now. “Because you murdered them.”

“The Daxams had influence everywhere,” Astra says, with a shrug. “When I finally managed to make it to California, Lar Gand’s machinations were enough to put me behind bars the moment I stepped off of the plane.”

“And now, you’re here, more than fifteen years later,” Maggie says. “In the very train where Lar Gand’s only son is murdered, while you were travelling in the same carriage as him.”

She’s satisfied to note that she sees _relief_ in Astra’s eyes, rather than alarm, when she speaks those words.

“I exacted my revenge decades ago, detective,” Astra says, sounding bored again. “Anything more would be overkill.”

“So you’re telling me it wasn’t you who sent the victim that text,” Maggie states. “And that you’re not the one that clumsily deleted it afterwards, unaware that a log of it would still be stored in the phone.”

“Yes,” comes the shamelessly bland answer.

“Okay,” Maggie says, closing her notebook and getting up from her seat. “Thank you for your cooperation, Miss In-Ze. You can go now.”

James, who had been silent through the whole interview, turns to Maggie with surprise and disbelief written all over his face, as soon as Astra leaves.

“Do you really think it was her?” he asks. “But that’s so... so obvious!”

“It often is, isn’t it?” Maggie asks. “Occam’s Razor and all that.”

“I don’t buy it,” James says. “But, I am confused about one thing.”

“Which is?”

“Why would she bother sending the text?” James asks. “The man might not have even known her sister’s name. She died when he was a child. Why would her name mean anything to him?”

“That does seem stupid,” Maggie says, gathering up the last of her things from the table, and walking out. “She was practically turning herself in.”

“So why, then?” James asks, following her to the exit.

Maggie smiles, and holds the door open for him this time.

“We’ll see.”

\---

 

That night, Maggie sits out dinner again. This time, as she’s going over her notes, there’s a knock at the door. She stares at the door, then at the drawer she’d stored her gun in, before shaking her head and calling out.

“It’s open. Come in.”

It’s Alex who walks in, taking in both the room and Maggie sitting on the floor in one sweeping frown.

“I knew you’d be hiding out again,” she says. “I hope James is at least getting you something to eat?”

“He always does,” Maggie says.

She feels oddly elated, almost awkward, at the sight of Alex standing in what she has come to think of as _her room_ on this train.

“What’re you doing here?”

Alex blinks at the question.

“I’m here to check on your wound, of course,” she says. “I told you to rest, but I hear you haven’t been doing that.”

“Would you, in my position?” Maggie asks.

Instead of replying, Alex just kneels down in front of her, and extends an arm imperiously.

“I’m fine,” Maggie says, trying to sound exasperated as she lifts up her wounded arm.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Alex says.

She runs a critical eye over the bandaging, and Maggie watches her in turn, feeling something warm unfurl in her chest under the scrutiny of those careful eyes.

“There’s no bleedthrough,” Alex concedes. “I’ll need to apply a new dressing tomorrow, though, so don’t argue.”

“I’m not,” Maggie says, feeling that odd warmth again.

“Good,” Alex says. Her voice suddenly sounds rough, as she lets go of Maggie. “I’ll come by before breakfast.”

She cares, Maggie realizes, looking at that grave face.

Whatever else, Alex Danvers cares.

“You really are a doctor,” she says.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Alex asks, frowning again. “And no, I dropped out in my third year.”

“But you care,” Maggie states. “All that ‘life is sacred’ stuff. You care.”

Alex’s answering smile looks like it’s supposed to be mocking, but Maggie refuses to be deterred.

“You could have just let me get shot, out there,” she says. “I’m sure it would have made your life a lot easier. But, you didn’t.”

“If you think I’m some sort of saint, you’ve got the wrong Danvers sister,” Alex says.

“I’m not in the canonizing business,” Maggie assures her. “It was just a passing observation, Danvers. Let’s neither of us read too much into it.”

Alex nods, looking unsatisfied anyway.

“You only did two interviews today,” she remarks. “Getting bored?”

“I thought you wanted me to rest,” Maggie says. “Maybe I was just following doctor’s orders.”

Alex snorts.

“I don’t think so,” she says. “You seemed pretty gungho about getting the truth out of me, at our last interview. Then, yesterday and today, it’s like you forgot I was even one of the suspects.”

“I didn’t forget,” Maggie says, thinking of her sleepless night. “I never forget that, Alex.”

Alex watches her silently, before her face seems to harden again.

“What is it, then?” she asks. “What’s going on?”

“I had my colleague run a background check on you,” Maggie says.

“And?”

“I found nothing,” Maggie says. “Not nothing out of the ordinary, but just... nothing. You exist in the system, but it’s like after you dropped out of Stanford, you just... disappeared.”

“Inconvenient for you,” Alex says.

“For you, too,” Maggie says. “Do you understand how that makes you look even more suspicious?”

Alex shrugs, but her mouth is set at an unhappy slant.

“On the face of it, you seem like the guiltiest person here,” Maggie says. “You’ve tried to intimidate me into silence, you’ve said flat out that you’re willing to kill for your sister, you’ve made your hatred of the victim clear, and I have only your sister’s word for it that you were in your compartment during the time of the murder.”

“Then, what are we still doing here?” Alex asks. “If you’re so convinced of my guilt, why don’t you put me in chains and hand me over to Lane?”

“Because, it doesn’t work!” Maggie says, suddenly. “You’re so obviously guilty, and yet none of it adds up!”

She stares at Alex, willing herself to see through her, and get at whatever she’s hiding. Alex remains as opaque as ever, only that downward slant of her mouth giving any indication as to her feelings.

“What doesn’t add up?” she asks.

“This afternoon, you knew exactly who Veronica Sinclair was,” Maggie says. “I heard you gasp, even though you tried to hide it. That name meant something to you.”

“I already told you I’d been following the Roulette case,” Alex says.

“But, not even the press knew Roulette’s real name,” Maggie says. “It’s been a closely held secret within the NCPD taskforce for years, our one trump card against her. Only one organization outside of the taskforce knows it: the FBI task force in New York, that was assigned to investigate Roulette’s activities in that city.”

Alex shakes her head, but she never breaks eye contact.

“I’m not who you think I am,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “Maggie, please, it’s not what you think.”

“If you know what I think, you’re one step ahead of me,” Maggie says. “Because, I’m still not sure.”

“I’m not FBI.”

“That’s the only thing that fits,” Maggie says. “If you are, then all the peculiarities about you add up.”

“And if not?” Alex asks. “If not, I’m guilty. Is that it?”

Maggie shakes her head.

“You’re not going to make this easy for me,” she murmurs. “I can see that much, at least.”

“And _you’ve_ made this difficult for me from the very start,” Alex says, smiling.

Maggie acknowledges the blow with a rueful nod.

“You should go back to your dinner, Alex,” she says. “Thanks for checking up on me, but I think I need to think this through alone.”

She leans back against the bed as Alex leaves, and sighs again, wondering for the hundredth time if her conjectures about the woman are justified, or just wishful thinking.

\---

 

“So, she just came to see you about the bandages?” James asks, later that night, as they sit side by side on the floor of the compartment, eating the dinner he’d brought in. “That was all?”

He looks doubtful, and somewhat worried, as he stares at Maggie over his bowl.

“It’s not like she would hurt me,” Maggie says, feeling oddly defensive all of a sudden.

James raises his eyebrows at her, and she scrambles to justify the hasty statement.

“I mean, she was the one who saved me. Why bother with that, if she wanted me dead?”

James considers that, as he chews.

“Do you believe her, though?” He asks, after another bite. “About everything she told you, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” Maggie says, stirring the soup to buy herself some time. “There are too many possibilities, right now, for me to be sure of it.”

“But, you want to believe her,” James states.

Maggie remains silent, still frowning into her soup.

“Hey,” James’ voice is gentle, as if talking to a skittish animal. “It’s ok, Maggie. You’re just human.”

“Stop,” Maggie says. “Don’t go there.”

That gets her a few minutes of reprieve, as they both eat in companionable silence.

“So that’s all?” James pursues, when he sets aside his empty bowl. “She just looked over your wound, answered your questions, and then left?”

Maggie’s face warms up at once.

“ _Yes,_ ” she says, inhaling too much soup by accident, and almost coughing it back out. “I said, drop it.”

“I’ve kept quiet for this long,” James says. “But, come on, Maggie. She shielded you during a shootout. There’s got to be something there.”

“There’s nothing,” Maggie insists, her voice raspy.

“Then, how come your face is all red?”

“From the soup. It’s hot.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Shut up,” Maggie says. “For the last time.”

“Fine, I’ll shut up, Sawyer,” James says peaceably, opening up a cup of sliced peaches, that he inhales in seconds. “Just saying, I’m not blind.”

He sobers up by the time they’re both finished their meals, and are confronted once more with the urgency of the matter entrusted to them.

“What are we going to do?” he asks. “It feels like no matter what new information we dig up, none of it makes enough sense to lead us to the killer.”

Maggie says nothing, just stares at the wall opposite her.

“At least, I can’t make sense of it,” James amends. “You’ve been pretty noncommittal about what you’re thinking.”

“Let’s just go to bed,” Maggie suggests, stretching her body, and ignored the implied invitation to share her thoughts. “Things might look a little clearer in the morning.”

Just as she gets up, though, there comes a knock on the door, followed by another, both precise and clearly heard.

“Detective Sawyer?” the deep voice of Conductor Jones comes from outside the compartment. “Sorry to bother you this late at night, but I’d like a word with you.”

Maggie turns to stare at James, who frowns at the door.

“Do people think this place is a 24-7 confessional?” he mutters, but subsides when Maggie throws him a quelling look, as she goes to open the door.

“I won’t take too much of your time, Detective Sawyer,” Conductor Jones says, when she lets him in. “But, it’s come to my attention that you’ve had some questions about how Miss Danvers came about some confidential information, on a case you’re helping out in.”

“And?” Maggie asks, letting the man advance only a few paces into the room.

“I’m afraid that’s on me,” Conductor Jones says. “As it happens, she came by that knowledge through me.”

“And how did you come by it?” Maggie asks.

At this question, the man silently hands over a paper to Maggie, a photocopy of the front and back of an ID card. Maggie reads “Intelligence Division” and “J’onn J’onzz” and “Federal Bureau of Investigation”, before quickly looking up at the man.

“You’re-?” she begins.

“Not an active agent,” the man says. “I retired a little over three years ago.”

Maggie looks at the copy again. On each side of the ID card, she can faintly make out the the word “RETIRED”, in perforation superimposed over the writing on the card.

“Intelligence Division,” Maggie murmurs. “Yes, I remember being asked to turn over some of our case files to the New York FIG working on the case.”

“My original ID and badge are back at my house, I’m afraid,” Conductor Jones says, when Maggie nods and hands the photocopy back to him. “They have no official authority, so I see no point in carrying them around on me.”

“Supposing this is accurate,” Maggie says, “What are you doing here, Conductor... J’onzz?”

J’onn J’onzz gives a slight shift of his shoulders, that might be his version of a shrug.

“I was forced to retire from the agency due to a shift in politics in Washington,” he says. “I missed the action, and here is as good a place to find it as any.”

“And that’s how General Lane got a man brave enough to conduct trains through one of the most dangerous passages in the world,” Maggie surmises. “Why the change of name, though?”

“Keeps passengers from mutilating my real name every time they try to pronounce it,” the man says, with a grimace. “The hiring officer was aware of the change, at the time of my offer.”

“And, are you confessing to me that you were indiscreet enough to reveal to Miss Danvers the details of an investigation that you know hasn’t been closed yet?” Maggie asks.

J’onn J’onzz grimaces again.

“As I’ve said, it was a lapse of judgement on my part. Miss Danvers and I were chatting about the passengers during her first night on the train, and when the discussion naturally turned to your career, I let information about the case of Veronica Sinclair slip. Miss Danvers was unaware of the confidential nature of the information. All fault lies with me. I thought that, out here, it wouldn’t matter.”

“I’d say you thought wrong,” Maggie says. “If I was convinced that you’re telling me the truth right now.”

He stiffens. “Are you suggesting that I’m lying?”

“I’m suggesting that you’re not telling me the whole truth, at least,” Maggie says. “But, that doesn't matter. I’ll find out one way or another.”

She makes the words intentionally cocky in an effort to draw the conductor’s ire, and provoke him into revealing more, but he remains as composed as ever.

“I just wanted to make sure that Miss Danvers isn’t in hot water for this,” he reiterates. “This slipup was a lack of judgment on my part, not hers.”

“Miss Danvers?” Maggie asks, staring at the man. “You were just fine with calling her Alex, when the two of you thought I couldn’t hear you.”

She watches him closely, but he doesn’t betray a single emotion at her words, not even a momentary widening of eyes. He simply stares back at her, and Maggie gives it up as a lost cause. There’s no way she’s going to accurately read an FBI agent who has years of experience on her when it comes to subterfuge. If she has to solve this case, it’s going to be through her brains, not by going toe to toe against this man.

“I’ll keep in mind what you said, conductor,” she says. “Thank you for coming to me about it.”

He seems to hesitate minutely at that, as if surprised that she had accepted his words so readily, but nods and turns for the exit right afterwards. Maggie closes the door after him, making sure he’s out of hearing distance, before turning back to James.

“Do you think that’s the last of your visitors for the night?” he asks her, half-jokingly. “Only, I don’t think I can handle it if Cat Grant bursts in to confess, too.”

Maggie sighs, shaking her head.

“Forget any confessions, I just want to get some sleep,” she murmurs, frowning as the twinge in her wounded arm starts up again, the pain worsened by her lack of rest during the day.

She moves tiredly towards the ensuite closet, but stops when she realizes that James is drawing something in his notebook, instead of his usual neat notes.

“What’s that?” she asks, leaning down to take a better look at the jumble of lines on the page.

“I’m trying to figure out how everyone here seems to be connected to each other,” James says, now busy circling the points where each line meets, and writing each passenger’s name next to the circles.

Maggie takes a long look at the web-like diagram that results, before laughing suddenly.

“What?” James asks, looking up with a self-conscious expression.

“Nothing,” Maggie says, lips still twitching as she stares at the web of names. “It just reminded me of something I saw in a show once, is all.”

She studies the intercrossing lines on the page, frowning at the almost impossible array of coincidences.

“I’ve heard of six degrees of separation,” James says, echoing her thoughts. “But, this is ridiculous.”

Maggie snorts in agreement, and then sobers up, as she looks at the lines connecting each passenger to the other.

“What is it?” James asks.

“You want to know something funny? These lines... they don’t just all lead to Mon-el. They lead to _Kara_. All five of the others lead to her, in one way or another.”

That sets off something in her head, and Maggie’s hand stalls on the paper, fingers tapping idly against the scrawled lines. _Five._ A court of five, or something like it. Who had said that?

“Where do we go from here?” James asks, interrupting her thoughts. “Lucy’s dad is going to blow his stack if we don’t have an update for him soon.”

Maggie keeps staring at the paper for a long time, before answering.

“For now?” she asks. “We go to sleep. Tomorrow? We get everyone together, and we solve this case.”

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to @Sralinchen for beta-ing this entire fic.


	9. Chapter 9

Lucy gathers all the passengers in the restaurant car early the next morning, along with the conductor. Maggie stands by her side with James, observing silently as she begins the proceedings without preamble.

“General Lane will be arriving mid-afternoon today,” Lucy starts, her tone formal. “If he chooses to detain you all until this investigation is over, you may be held here for quite a long time. I’m hoping Detective Sawyer will offer us a way out of that.”

Although an aura of dissatisfaction hangs in the air around the group of passengers by the end of Lucy’s remarks, even Cat Grant doesn’t put up a caustic argument against them. Maggie looks from face to face, and knows that every one of them understands the gravity of this last meeting.

“Detective?” Lucy prompts.

Maggie realizes she’s been stalling far too long, caught in the reluctant atmosphere of the group herself. As Lucy steps back, she steps forward, feeling mildly claustrophobic when every eye in the room turns to her. Then, the old training kicks in. Maggie focuses her gaze on a spot at the far end of the wall, rather than on any of the people in the room, and begins.

“As we’ve established, I’m not currently affiliated with an organization.” she says. “As such, I’m not here to make an arrest. I was only asked to solve a case.”

“Are we re-enacting an Agatha Christie here?” Cat asks, but her drawl lacks the usual bite. “Get on with it, detective.”

“As it happens, I’d like to propose two solutions to the case,” Maggie says, ignoring her. “I’ll leave it to Major Lane to decide which is the more plausible one.”

Out of the corner of her eyes, she spies Lucy looking alarmed, and shoots her a brief smile that she hopes looks comforting.

“Is this a game?” Alex demands, striding forward. “What are you playing at, Maggie?”

“No game,” Maggie says. “I’m dead serious.”

She pauses to let that sink in, before continuing.

“The key to this crime depends on when it took place. There have always been three distinct possibilities. The obvious answer would be some minutes after 1AM, as all the initial clues indicated. Alternatively, it could have happened before then, or after.”

“So, any time or no time at all,” Lena Luthor interjects, a slice of a smile sharpening her face. “That’s not narrowing it down.”

“It is, if you take each possibility on its own, and consider it,” Maggie says. “To begin with, it was obvious at first glance that the crime was committed some time after one, not before. There is the fact that I overheard the victim — or the man I assumed to be the victim — in his room around twenty minutes to one. There is the fact that he sent out his last email from his phone at that time.”

Murmurs rise up from the group at this, and Maggie tries to quell them with a raised hand.

“This just happened to be the time when everyone in the train could vouch for their presence,” she continues. “The conductor was in his seat, except for the short period of time when he entered the dining car, where his presence was monitored by the security cameras there. The Danvers sisters were watching a movie together. Ms. Luthor was having a video conference, and was overheard by Miss In-Ze. Miss Grant shared an adjoining room with Mr. Daxam, but the conductor assures me that the door was locked from both sides. Ms. Luthor would have seen any stranger entering the corridor from one end of the train, and the conductor would have seen anyone entering from the other end. Have I been wrong in the facts so far, Major Lane?”

“No,” Lucy says, frowning. “You’re not wrong, but you’re not telling us anything we don’t already know, either.”

“I’m getting there,” Maggie says, still addressing the wall. “The thing is, the whole thing falls apart when you look beyond the surface. To begin with, can we be sure that the time of death was after one? Who’s to say the victim wasn’t already dead by then?”

“But, you heard the victim yourself, at twenty three minutes to one, and he replied to an email around one.”

“I heard, in the middle of my sleep, a man’s voice coming from Mr. Daxam’s compartment,” Maggie says. “I assumed it was him, at the time, because every contextual clue pointed to that. In reality, it could have been anyone disguising their voice, just as it could have easily been someone else replying to the email from his phone.”

“What’s the point of this?” Lucy asks. “What are you getting at?”

“The point is, it opens up the possibility for the murder to have been committed earlier,” Maggie says. “The chain of text messages abruptly stopped around midnight, for no seeming reason. Suppose the reason for it was the victim’s death.”

“The train hit the snowdrift at half past midnight,” Lucy says, slowly. “No one would have been able to get in or out of the carriage after that.”

“So, our suspect secretly boards the train,” Maggie says. “We know Mr. Daxam’s window was open, so he could have gotten in through there, and hidden in his compartment. He has a grudge against the victim, for whatever reason. He drugs his drink, waits until he passes out before murdering him, and slips out quietly at the Kandor outpost. He doesn’t mean for the murder to be found until the next morning, when the train is far away, at its destination. Instead, the train runs into a snowdrift, and the body is found earlier than he had anticipated.”

“So that’s your theory?” Lucy asks. “That a stranger did this, and fled?”

“That’s my first solution,” Maggie says.

“And the person you overheard?”

“It could have been anyone,” Maggie says. “It could be one of the passengers who had a grudge against Mr. Daxam, and sneaked into his compartment, only to find him already dead. They panicked, yelled out, and then pretended to be the victim, when the conductor answered the call.”

Lucy looks extremely dissatisfied, which Maggie doesn’t blame her for. She suspects she’d feel the same, if the shoe were on the other foot. 

“My second solution is a little more complicated,” She says. “To begin with—”

“Wait.”

Alex’s terse voice pierces the air, and Maggie turns away for the first time from the wall, to study her. Alex looks haunted again, and her gaze is downright pleading.

“Please,” she says. “Before you start, let Kara leave the room.”

“What?” Kara looks annoyed, then furious. “Alex, I’m not a kid anymore. I have as much a right to hear this as you!”

“Kara,” Alex’s voice is strained, as strained as her face looks. “Please leave. I can’t have you hear this.”

“No!” Kara shouts. “You think I’m stupid? I saw that bottle, Alex. I  _ know _ —”

“ _ Kara, please _ .”

Alex repeats the words in a mere whisper, and that seems to draw Kara up short. She regards her sister for some moments, anger turning to acceptance, before looking at Maggie questioningly.

Maggie glances at James, who nods and walks over to Kara.

“Let me come with you, Miss Danvers,” he offers.

After some hesitation, Kara follows him out the door. In the vacuum that follows, the silent passengers turn to Maggie again, and she continues.

“From the beginning,” she says, “I haven’t been the only one struck by how so much of the passengers on this train seem to be connected to each other, and to the victim. Over the course of my investigation, I’ve found out that almost all of you had some motive to kill him. Alex, to protect your sister. Miss Grant, to avenge your former protégé, and protect your new one. Miss In-Ze, to avenge your sister’s death. Mr. Schott, to protect someone you consider to be family. Even the conductor of this train, I’ve learned, is suspect in this regard.”

“ _ Him _ ?” Lucy asks, in abject disbelief.

“Those classified secrets we discussed earlier... you weren’t the one who told them to Miss Danvers, did you?” Maggie asks, ignoring Lucy and turning to the conductor. “Someone like you, being so indiscreet with a person you barely know? I don’t buy it.”

Alex gives a small sigh and looks down, while J’onn continues to give nothing away by his expression.

“No, Alex knew those secrets because she worked with you,” Maggie continues. “The fact that you were willing to cover for her regardless, implies a strong protective impulse towards her. That probably explains why you’re here today. If she was hellbent on a course of action, and you saw that she couldn’t be dissuaded, I’ve no doubt you’d help her.”

“So, you’re saying that it’s the two of them?” Lucy interrupts.

“I’m saying that it’s a possibility,” Maggie says. “The upshot is, everyone on this carriage had a reason to murder Mr. Daxam, at one point or another.”

“But, who did?”

Maggie waits a beat before answering, to make sure she has the attention of everyone in the room.

“All of them,” she says, then. “They were all in on it. That is my second solution, Major Lane.”

\---

 

The silence that reigns after Maggie’s pronouncement isn’t a very shocked one, except on Lucy’s part.

“All of them?” Lucy repeats, faintly.

Maggie nods.

“My first suspect was the obvious one: Kara Danvers,” she says. “She’s the jilted ex-lover. She’s clearly a commitment type, and he wasn’t. It’s easy to conjecture that she got attached to the victim, and when he ‘escaped’, as she saw it, she took matters into her own hands.”

“But you took Kara out of the room,” Lucy says.

“I did,” Maggie says. “It’s become clear to me, over the course of the investigation, that somehow she’s the one person in this carriage least likely to be guilty of the crime, despite being the most obvious suspect. I’ve been confused over that for a while now, until Miss In-Ze told me something, last night.”

She regards Astra, who shrugs back at her philosophically.

“A court of five, you said,” Maggie recounts. “That’s what was used to dispense justice, back in your homeland of Krypton. Is that what this was... justice?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer to that question before turning back to Lucy, who only looks more confused.

“If they’re all guilty, how is Kara innocent?”

  
“Because she was drugged,” Maggie says. “We already know Kara borrowed aspirin from Miss Grant on the night of the murder. The sleeping pills were substituted for the aspirin, a smaller dosage of the same drug used on Daxam, to make sure she’d be out for the time of the murder. The intent was to keep her out of the matter altogether, since she’d otherwise be the prime suspect, due to her past connection with the victim.”

“But, her alibi!” Lucy protests, frowning. “She claimed to have been watching a movie with her sister that night.”

“She said that to cover for Alex,” Maggie says. “I was suspicious of that alibi from the start, but I thought it was Alex lying to protect Kara, when it was actually the other way around. Kara probably understood that she’d been drugged, as soon as she heard of the murder. Naturally, she suspected her sister of being the perpetrator. My guess is she’d seen the sleeping pills in Alex’s possession, before Alex had given them to Miss Grant, to be hidden as harmless medication in her aspirin bottle. With the knowledge that her sister could come under suspicion, Kara offered up an alibi at once, that Alex had no choice but to go along with.”

She looks at the woman in question as she speaks, and Alex looks away, as if ashamed.

“And the intruder in Miss Grant’s room?” Lucy asks.

“There was none,” Maggie says, and continues before Cat can get an argument in. “Miss Grant’s compartment was the conduit to enter Mr. Daxam’s. He’d locked his door from the inside, and he had not left his window open, after all. Think about it... why would a man raised on the west coast leave a window open all night, in the middle of a winter storm? One of the passengers must have opened it afterwards.”

Lucy turns to regard Cat Grant with new and horrified eyes, as Maggie continues.

“What really happened is that, at some time, likely around two in the morning, each passenger stole through Miss Grant’s room, to that of the sleeping victim, and stabbed him while he lay asleep. I don’t think he ever felt pain; the drug administered to him was too strong for him to have felt anything at all.”

Despite herself, Maggie feels a little sick as she recounts it, and from what she sees on Lucy’s face, the latter seems to be faring even worse.

“How was he drugged?” Lucy asks, her voice controlled, despite her expression of horror.

“By the secretary, no doubt under the directions of Miss Danvers,” Maggie says, eyes flitting back to Alex, who’s still looking down. “The victim might have opened the can of beer himself, but there was a moment, when Ms. Luthor accidentally walked into his compartment, that he was distracted. It was just enough time for Mr. Schott to spike the drink.”

“It makes sense,” Lucy murmurs. “I hate that it all makes so much sense.”

“It explains the eccentric pattern of the stab wounds on the victim’s body, too,” Maggie continues, pushing past her distaste. “It’s not one person striking from improbably variant angles, with varying levels of strength and feeling. It’s five different people stabbing him one after the other, with no one knowing who struck the killing blow, to make sure that they were all equally culpable under the law.”

“But the voice you heard—” Lucy starts.

“It was a ruse,” Maggie says, watching the passengers’ faces as she says this, for any flicker of acknowledgment or confirmation. “The victim was already under the influence of the drug, by then. That voice and the back-and-forth with the conductor, was just something else to muddy the waters, and confuse the investigation. I’d bet good money that the text message chain was, too, although I can’t prove how that particular part played out. And, of course, the tracksuit placed in my own suitcase served the same purpose.”

Lucy, if possible, looks even sicker, as she stares at the passengers around her through new eyes.

“All of them,” she states. “All of  _ you.” _

“If we did, and no one is admitting anything,” Cat snaps, “So what? Do you think a man like that would have ever been convicted, for all the girls whose lives he ruined? For what he did to Leslie? Do you think he’d ever have left Kara, a young girl with a bright future, alone? Do you think the law would have protected her?”

“Kitty, enough,” Astra says, breaking into the tirade.

“Excuse me?” Cat snaps, turning around and looking outraged.

“You’re getting angry over nothing,” Astra says. “Getting this offended over such a fanciful tale.”

She turns to Maggie, her gaze placid.

“I did it, detective. Alone. You already know of my history with the Daxams.”

“You’re confessing?” Maggie asks. “That’s convenient, isn’t it, especially when I have that deleted text message as proof of your guilt?”

“Do you think your general will object, if I handed myself in?” Astra asks. “I’m sure he knows of my history, or he’ll learn it soon enough. Rhea and Lar Gand Daxam were already dead by the time I was released. It would be the most natural thing in the world, for me to exact revenge on their only living offspring.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Astra,” Cat snaps, before Maggie can reply to that. “There is absolutely no case here, and your hysterical confession is of no use to anyone. I know you like being the center of attention, but this is outrageous even for you.”

Then, they’re all speaking at once, over each other, while Lucy looks overwhelmed. Maggie just waits, knowing it’ll die down sooner or later.

The way it does suprises her, though.

“No,” Alex says, to some indistinct suggestion, and then louder. “No, this is useless!”

She shakes her head, and stands up.

“It’s me. I have to go, don’t I?”

She looks at Maggie, and she’s shaking, she whom Maggie had once thought of as immovable.

“It was me,” she says. “You know it. I was the one that drugged him, and I was the first one that stabbed him.”

Maggie resolutely steers her mind away from the memory of that precise cut to the heart that had bled so much.

“As of now, all I can say is multiple people stabbed the body,” she says, looking away. “I can’t speak to the specifics.”

“But, it was me,” Alex insists. “It was my plan, I—”

“Sit down and stop blathering, Scully,” Cat snaps, before rounding on Maggie again. “You think you’ve got anything proven? Try to accuse any of us in court, detective, and I’ll have this entire train  _ and _ you covered up in so much litigation that they could run an entire season of  _ The Good Wife _ out of the fallout.”

“LCorp won’t make this easy for you, either,” Lena Luthor adds, looking just as determined.

“I think that show is over, so neither of you ladies will have to make good on your threats,” Maggie says, lips twitching. “As I’ve already said, I’m not here to accuse or arrest anyone. I’m here to present a solution to a case, and I’ve done so.”

She turns to Lucy.

“So, there you have it, Major Lane. The general arrives this afternoon, and I have provided you with two likely hypotheses as to what happened. It’s up to you to decide which one you’ll present to him.”

She can only imagine whatever struggle is going on within Lucy, as she glares first at Maggie and then at the floor. Maggie realizes that she’s at a loss to know what will happen. In her experience, most cases tend to follow predictable patterns. This one has surprised her far too many times, for her to be comfortable with predicting what Lucy will do, now.

“General Lane would want this cleared up just as quickly as I do, to prevent any further disagreements with the Argonian government,” Lucy says, at last. “With me presenting the solution, backed up by Detective Sawyer’s testimony, he’ll defer to our findings.”

She takes a deep breath, and seems to study the ground again, before facing the passengers.

“I think that the first solution that Detective Sawyer presented makes the most sense,” she says, slowly and deliberately. “This passage has always been known for being dangerous, and the Kandor outpost is especially notorious. The general will be disappointed that the culprit got away before they could be apprehended, but this isn’t the first time that this has happened.”

She shoots a quick sideways glance at Maggie when she finishes, questioning.

“I’ll stand by that solution when you present it to General Lane, of course,” Maggie says.

Lucy nods, commanding again, as if she’d expected no less, and a ripple of relief seems to go through the occupants of the room. They relax almost as one, this odd and mixed-up family, but Maggie only has eyes for Alex, who practically collapses into a chair, as if sheer willpower had left her upright until then.

\---

 

General Sam Lane arrives that evening. He insists on rounding all the passengers out onto the snowbank, and questioning them himself, and then Maggie and Lucy afterwards. Eventually, though, he accepts the solution that his daughter presents to him. If anything, Maggie suspects the man to be relieved at not having to undertake the investigation himself, despite his show of interrogating everyone.

As he announces his final decision on the matter, she sneaks out of the gathering to make some final phone calls, on account of the lines being finally restored. When the crowd disperses, Maggie looks over to see Lucy striding towards her, looking more lighthearted than Maggie has ever seen her.

“My father will take care of everything from here on,” Lucy says, as she nears. “And, the officers tell me the route ahead is clear. We should be starting off again, soon.”

“Great,” Maggie says, internally calculating just how much she and James would have to rush, to get to the NCPD headquarters on time.

“He’s smoothing things over with the Argonian governor, too,” Lucy continues. And, I’ve arranged for expedited boarding for all of you, when we get to the airport.”

Maggie nods gratefully.

“You surprised me, with your decision,” she says, figuring Lucy is owed that acknowledgement, after her part in the proceedings of the previous night. “From everything James told me about you, I thought—”

She trails off, at a rare loss for words. Lucy, for her part, seems to look uncomfortable.

“I’m not flying out to a work meeting,” she says, after some obvious internal deliberation. “I have an interview in Opal City, with a law firm.”

Maggie, glancing at her with some surprise, gets a faint smile in return.

“They’re willing to take me on as a junior associate,” Lucy says. “They want someone to tackle their overdue pro bono cases, but they wanted to fly me in and arrange an in-person meeting, first.”

“You’re resigning your commission?” Maggie asks. 

“I’m thinking about it,” Lucy says, frowning. “I’ve been thinking about... a lot of things, over the past few months.”

She seems to deliberate with herself again, before taking a small scrap of paper out of her pocket.

“I have to go with my father now, but give this to James, will you?” she asks, handing it over to Maggie. “It’s my Opal City number, in case he wants to chat about... old times.”

Maggie hesitates, not entirely comfortable with being in the middle of this kind of entanglement. One look at Lucy, though, shows her how much she must have struggled before making this concession, on top of lying to her own father.

“I’ll give it to him,” she says, relenting.

Lucy flashes a grateful smile at her, before hurrying back towards General Lane. Maggie waits a while, before following the tide of passengers drifting back to the carriage, hanging back just far enough that she doesn’t have to join them.

\---

 

The train stops one final time that night, for refuelling, and Maggie takes the chance to escape outside. She stands by the railings of the small station, watching the snow outside. In the night, she can concede there’s a beauty to this landscape, that had escaped it in the bright days and afternoons.

She’s been standing there for so long that she’s not surprised when her solitary vigil is joined by a taller figure falling into place beside her.

“You’ve been avoiding us,” Alex says, in a quiet voice. “We’re not afraid of you, you know. Not anymore.”

Maggie looks at her, and her brittle smile, wondering how much of that comment is a joke.

“Didn’t really feel like there was a point,” she says. “We all go our own ways tomorrow.”

“Right.” 

Alex takes a deep breath, and seems to hold it. She looks at Maggie, looks away, then searches out her face again. Maggie stares back at her, finally allowing herself to look at Alex Danvers, and take her in as endlessly as she’s wanted to since she’d met her.

“You didn’t have to do what you did,” Alex says.

“Let’s not talk about that.”

Alex’s hand seems to tremble on the railing, just for an instant, before sliding over to rest next to Maggie’s, barely touching. She seems transfixed by that slight contact, but Maggie is only staring at her. 

“I want to explain something,” Alex says. “I want you to know why I did what I did, Maggie. I’m not—”

She stops, as if to control herself, and Maggie steps in.

“No,” she says. Her voice sounds as if it doesn’t belong to herself. “You can’t, Alex. Not to me.”

She’s seen iron self-control break, and strong floodgates being dashed away by waves of water, and she sees both in Alex now. She wonders how long the woman has held her secrets inside herself, and it seems cruel for Maggie to tell her to continue doing it, but she’s worried. She’s racked with it, with worry and anxiety, for all of them, but for Alex the most.

“Maggie...”

Alex’s fingers travel from the railings to her face. Maggie closes her eyes at the first touch of fingertips against skin.

“Please,” Alex begs her. “Please, let me tell you.”

“No,” Maggie whispers. “Alex, you need to leave here, and you need to not tell me anything. It’s not safe.”

She opens her eyes to see Alex’s stepping backwards, looking disappointed and devastated.

“Then you’ll never understand,” she says. “Why I did what I— what I—”

She stops again, as if the very idea is still difficult for her to face, despite all her earlier bravado.

“I don’t,” Maggie says. “Maybe I never will. But, I understand you, and that’s enough. You don’t have to say anything further.”

There’s that brittle smile again. Maggie finds herself lost in it, tracing every flicker of expression, and twitching of lips. She grips the railing to steady herself, and tears her eyes away.

“We should be at the airport tomorrow,” she says, sounding much calmer than she feels. “We should both get some sleep before then.”

“I guess you’re heading to NCPD headquarters,” Alex says. “I heard they’ve brought Sinclair in.”

Maggie nods.

“Why would you still help them?” Alex asks, sounding angry for the first time in the conversation, “They hung you out to dry over her. Why do you still care?”

“I have to,” Maggie says. “I just have to, ok?”

“And after that?” Alex asks, encroaching closer again. It sets every nerve of Maggie’s body alert, and yearning. “Where will you go?”

Her gaze is pleading, asking without asking.

“Alex,” Maggie starts, biting her lips. “We can’t. You know that.”

“But, I just found you,” Alex says, looking miserable.

“I know,” Maggie replies, trying her hardest not to look as broken as she feels inside. “I know.”

\---

 

They arrive at the airport by the afternoon of the next day, and from there, it’s a race against time for Maggie and James.

“Do you think we should see the rest of them off?” James murmurs, looking a bit hesitant as they collect their luggage.

“No,” Maggie replies, walking ahead of him. “Let’s go get these checked in.”

James seems to hesitate further, before following her brisk pace. However, just as they reach their terminal, Maggie can’t help but take a look back at the other passengers, still in the waiting area.

Kara is huddled in Astra’s arms, supported on the other side by Lena. Cat has one arm on Astra’s shoulder, and Winn is standing next to them looking awkward. J’onn, who had accompanied the rest of them into the area, seems to be arguing into his phone, while patting Alex on the shoulder. Alex, though... Alex is staring right at Maggie, right through all the distance and crowd and noise separating them.

“You’re just going to leave?” James asks, looking back and seeing where Maggie’s eyes are fixated on.

Maggie nods and turns back, fishing out her boarding pass.

“Maggie... “

“James,” she says. “Stop it, ok? Just... stop.”

She heads towards the automatic check-in before he can reply, willing herself not to think of maybes, and should-have-beens, and people meeting at the wrong times.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to @Sralinchen for beta-ing this entire fic!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning in this chapter for descriptions of Mon-El's abusive and controlling behavior.

They were never supposed to meet again, but they do.

\---

 

It happens when one of Maggie’s investigations goes wrong.

She’s supposed to meet a guy who’s a friend of a friend of one of her usual CIs, a guy who’s got information on a clandestine new crime syndicate she’s tracking down. 

It starts out the way every reconnaissance like this goes. There’s the flashing of wares, when each side proves they’ve got their end of the deal. The man gives her the flash drive with the information, Maggie hands over the pre-arranged cash, and that’s that.

Except it isn’t. Something about his eyes, and the set of his shoulders warns Maggie, and she isn’t surprised when he tucks the money away into his pocket, and then charges her, aiming for the flash drive that she hasn’t even had time to put away.

The gun is heavy in her pocket, but Maggie keeps away from it, putting her hands up and retreating.

“Come on, buddy,” she calls out, to the advancing man. “It’s not worth it.”

He keeps brandishing his makeshift weapon. It’s not even a knife, it’s a broken pipe, sharp and jagged. Maggie keeps her hands up, ready to duck, but also ready to charge.

“You don’t want to do this,” she says.

Apparently he does, because he charges her.

Maggie tenses, getting ready to duck out of the way, and then run him down. Before she can, a moving blur puts itself between her and him. It shoves Maggie down to the ground, before charging her attacker, matching him blow for blow. Maggie sees the pipe slash through the air in a sickening, jagged arc.

In reality, the fight lasts mere seconds, a desperate blur of limbs and blood that’s too brief for Maggie to stumble back up and put an end to. By the time she’s on her feet, her attacker is already on the ground, subdued and groaning.

Maggie rushes to him, looking over his wounds — nothing urgent — before zip-tying his hands behind his back. She gives another once-over of his body, before looking up at her timely savior.

Alex Danvers stares down at her, eyes wild and hair askew. 

\---

 

Somehow, Maggie isn’t surprised to see Alex there. Worried, yes, and exasperated due to the worry, but not actually surprised.

“There are better ways to get in touch with me, you know,” she says, getting up after another wary glance at her fallen attacker.

Alex grunts, as she dusts herself off.

“Shouldn’t we?” she asks, before stopping and indicating at the man groaning on the ground.

“I’m calling it in,” Maggie says, typing away into her phone. “They’ve got a patrol car on standby.”

“The NCPD?” Alex asks, wrinkling her nose.

Maggie studies her as she puts away her phone, running a worried look over the various cuts and scrapes on her body.

Come on,” she says.

She takes Alex back to her own bike, ignoring the injured woman’s protests. 

“I can’t just leave my bike here,” Alex protests.

“We can pick it up later,” Maggie says. “You’re injured.  _ Come on. _ ”

Alex acquiesces more easily that she had anticipated, and Maggie finds herself driving through the streets of National City in the glaring afternoon, trying to focus on her new case, on her injuries, on anything except the fact that Alex is back, and riding behind her. Her arms are wrapped around Maggie’s waist, her torso is draped right over Maggie’s back as if they were built to fit like that, and she’s so close that Maggie can feel her hair fly up with every exhale of breath.

She manages to get them home without driving into oncoming traffic from sheer nerves, and only breathes freely again when Alex extricates herself as they dismount. Maggie punches in the code to her apartment with somewhat shaky hands, before waving her through. 

Alex steps in as if she’s entering a temple, before looking back at Maggie close on her heels. She looks out of her element, none of her usual confidence evident in her face. 

Maggie just drinks her in, like she’d never see her again. Alex looks different. Her face looks fuller, less gaunt, as if some great worry had fallen away. Her hair is different, too, buzzed on the right side, and falling in short waves on the other.

“Thanks,” Alex says, breaking the silence as she sits on the edge of the worn sofa. “You didn’t have to bring me here.”

“Of course I did,” Maggie says, stooping down to inspect the other woman’s body. She can see that the dark shirt is wet with blood, from a cut on her side, in addition to numerous scrapes on her forearms, neck and face.

“I’m fine,” Alex says, drawing back in on herself, when their eyes meet again.

Maggie holds back a retort, and surveys her. 

“What are you doing here?” she asks, finally. “Shouldn’t you be in New York, or Midvale?”

Alex exhales. 

“J’onn got a new position, here,” she says. “He’s hiring me on, but I thought I should—”

She looks around, avoiding Maggie’s gaze and shrugging, before looking back at her.

“I’ve kind of been crashing at Kara’s place for a while,” she says. “I thought I’d make it official and get a place of my own, but I wanted to see you again, first.”

“By crashing my investigation,” Maggie says, lips crooking upwards.

Alex shrugs, unabashed. “Saved you, didn’t I?”

“And got hurt doing it,” Maggie reminds her.

She skims over the scrapes on Alex’s forearms without touching them, and sees Alex tense up.

“Sorry,” Maggie says, pursing her lips. “Come on, I’ll take you to the doctor.”

“I’m fine,” Alex repeats. “Maggie... please. _ ” _

She looks down, feet worrying at the carpet. 

“Fine,” Maggie says, relenting. “You’re at least patching that wound up, though. No excuses.”

She fetches Alex her first aid kit, and stands watching, as she gets to work. Alex rolls up her shirt, and cleans and disinfects her wound as if it’s second nature, fingers flying around her stomach as she looks around the room. Her gaze is searching, as if she really is interested.

“You live alone?”

Maggie nods, tearing her own eyes away from the bruised mass of abdomen that Alex is patching up, to gather up the leftover gauze and disinfectant back into the kit.

“It’s almost Christmas,” Alex says. “Shouldn’t you be with your family?”

“Shouldn’t you?” Maggie fires back.

“Jewish,” Alex says succinctly, as she gives a final expert twirl of the gauze around her stomach. “Not that that ever stopped my mom. What’s your excuse?”

“My family and I don’t really talk much,” Maggie sighs, moving away to put the kit back on its shelf.

When she turns back, Alex is staring at her again, expression somewhere between pensive and concerned.

“Don’t worry about it,” Maggie says, when she looks like she’s about to speak.

Alex’s mouth snaps shut for maybe one second, before she opens it again.

“Can’t do that,” she says, all grave and intense, even as a small smile fights its way onto her face. “I think I’m always gonna worry about you.”

Maggie snorts and looks down, feeling more awkward than she’s felt in decades. Something about Alex has her feeling like a teenager again, now that the immediate danger of the case that they’d been embroiled in is gone.

“Sit down?” Alex asks, interrupting her thoughts. “I mean, that’s a weird thing to say, it’s  _ your _ apartment—”

“No,” Maggie says, then shakes her head. “I mean, no, I have to head in to work. I’ve got a briefing to attend, this afternoon.”

She heads back to her briefcase, propping it open to make sure her files are still there, and adds in the flash drive from the morning. When she looks back, Alex is watching her with eyes narrowed.

“You’re still helping the NCPD,” Alex says. “That’s whom you were out there dodging bullets for, isn’t it?”

“I’m still freelance,” Maggie says. “I just got contracted for an investigation, as a special liaison.”

Alex looks mutinous, like she’s biting her tongue trying not to say something. Maggie sighs.

“They’ve got a new commissioner,” she says. “Marsdin isn’t like the old guys. She cares.”

“Olivia Marsdin?” Alex asks, looking thoughtful. “I’ve heard J’onn mention her.”

“The very same,” Maggie says.

Alex nods, still studying Maggie.

“I heard you managed to get Roulette locked up after all.”

Maggie shrugs, looking down and trying not to smile.

“You’re working this one alone?” Alex asks. “Where’s your buddy?”

“James is in Opal City. He’s helping a friend out with a court case,” Maggie says, “I guess I’m on my own, for now.”

When she looks back up at Alex, she seems to be struggling with herself.

“Can I wait here till you get back?” Alex blurts out. “I just—”

She bites her lips, and stares up at Maggie, and Maggie swears that every protest she’d had about this being a bad idea just shrivels up into dust and floats away, until she can’t even collect her thoughts. She just nods, and then shakes her head, when Alex shifts further back into the sofa.

“You’re hurt,” she says. “Come on, you’re not cramming yourself into the couch.”

She heads through the hallway, with Alex following behind. Halfway there, Maggie blinks, as Alex’s hand slips into hers, the gesture endearingly uncertain compared to her usual take-charge nature.

“You sure about this?” Alex asks, when they enter her bedroom.

“You’re hurt,” Maggie repeats, making a beeline to clear the books and papers off the mattress. “Just... rest. Please.”

She waits until Alex has folded herself in between the blankets, awkwardly given her taller frame, before smiling at the picture.

“What?” Alex asks, her own lip twitching.

Maggie shakes her head, and hefts her messenger bag. 

“Have fun, sleeping beauty,” she murmurs, as she flicks the light off.

“Does that mean you’re gonna wake me up with a kiss?” Alex asks, right as Maggie is going out the door.

Maggie looks back, surprised, to see her with her eyes closed, and a smile on her lips. Serene and gentle, the first peaceful smile that Maggie has ever seen on her.

It’s breathtaking.

\---

 

Commissioner Marsdin might have more of a spine than her predecessor ever did, but every meeting with her drives home to Maggie that even so dedicated a woman still needs to abide by the workplace politics deeply embedded into the NCPD. 

She returns from the Cadmus briefing tired and worn out, and not knowing what to expect as she walks into her apartment. Alex sleeping, maybe, or watching something on the TV.

She doesn’t expect to walk through the door to the strong smell of smoke, and Alex with a sheepish expression on her face, holding a pan from which smoke is billowing.

“Before you get mad,” she starts, “I already ordered pizza to make up for this. The good stuff, too, not that thick crust garbage.”

Maggie locks the door behind her in a blinking haze, and deposits her bag on its usual hook, before stepping forward and eyeing the blackened pan.

“I’m not even gonna ask how you managed that,” she says.

“I got too ambitious,” Alex says, looking rueful. “I was thinking I could make us something nice for dinner, and then—”

She shrugs, and Maggie snorts, looking at the remnant chunks of pasta in the pan, which are burnt almost to charcoal. 

“That’s not why it’s called pasta carbonara, you know.”

“Oh, haha,” Alex says.

“No, seriously,” Maggie says. “What happened to adding water? Or, did the sauce take one look at your cooking and run off?”

“Alright, enough with the backseat cooking advice,” Alex says, shoving the pan into the sink, and stirring some dishwasher in while the tap runs. 

It’s all so weirdly and incoherently domestic that Maggie blinks again. She wanders out into the kitchen as Alex makes another smartass comment, stares at the plates and pizza laid out, and then back at the figure making its way towards her.

“It’ll be cold if you don’t get at it soon,” Alex says, as she approaches. 

“Alex,” Maggie starts. “What’s all this? What’s going on?”

Alex seems to sag.

“It’s weird isn’t it?” She sighs, pinching her forehead where her eyebrows meet. “I’m so not good at stuff like this.”

“Everything about our entire situation has been weird,” Maggie says, “but you’re still here. Why?”

“Because of you,” Alex says, looking at her as if that’s obvious. “Fuck, I just... Maggie, I’m not good at saying stuff like this, but you’re... you’re a huge part of the reason I decided to stay in National City.”

“Me?” Maggie echoes, staring back at her. All of a sudden, her heart is beating so fast she can barely hear Alex speak over it.

“I had to see you again,” Alex says, in a rush. “I know the smart thing was to stay away, hope you forgot about us, but I just—”

She trails away, fingers worrying at the worn fabric covering one of the chairs.

She looks exhausted still, Maggie realizes, as Alex’s head bows. Not by lack of sleep, or simple tiredness. Just a bone deep exhaustion, of someone who’s been carrying the burden of others for far too long.

“I’m sorry,” Alex sighs. “I don’t know what I was thinking, coming here and expecting you to just put up with me.”

“Alex, that’s not—”

“I can’t stay away from you,” Alex admits, freezing the words in Maggie’s throat. “I mean, I will, if you want me to. I wasn’t trying to imply that I’d, I’d never want to—”

Maggie cuts off her rambling by taking two steps forward and enveloping Alex in her arms. 

And it feels... right. Like this was always supposed to happen, between them.

“I’m not letting you go. So stop babbling, ok, Danvers?”

“Ok,” Alex sags, as if a great weight just got lifted off her chest, and sinks into the hold, her arms looping around Maggie’s waist.

Their lips finds each other, hesitant and questing at first, as they move against each other, then slower still, but more intense.

“‘m sorry,” Alex murmurs against Maggie’s mouth, when they break a hair’s breadth apart for air. “I’m making this difficult for you.”

Maggie whispers a laugh back, feeling it exhale over Alex’s lips.

“Shut up,” she says, closing her eyes and blindly seeking out her mouth again. 

When they pull back again, they just stare at each other. Everything is the same, and yet, Maggie knows that everything has changed. They’ve taken a step forward into something new and unknown, and she can’t find it in herself to be scared, not even a little. Instead, her body is somewhere in the clouds, flying and floating and maybe dancing a little jig, because Alex Danvers has come back to her.

Has come back  _ for  _ her.

“You’ve changed your hair,” she says, breaking her silence, as she steps forward and fingers through the shorter locks. 

“Thought we’d already established that,” Alex says, her smile more confident now.

Maggie runs enthralled fingers over the stubble on the undercut side, the texture of it so unlike the smooth falls of hair on the other side.

“It’s rough,” she says, softly. Admiringly.

Alex’s replying smile is like a nightlight in the dark.

\---

 

They don’t do much together that night, aside from fumbling kisses and touches, as they learn each other’s bodies. Just the simple intimacy of holding Alex feels new to Maggie, and just about overwhelming in its unexpectedness. 

And actually kissing Alex? That’s like nothing she’s ever felt before, because Alex is wondering and hesitant and overeager by turns. Kissing her feels like tossing the dice on whether Maggie’s playing with a wildfire or a gentle candle flame, and she can never figure out which one’s coming up next.

“So you haven’t—” she starts, when they break apart from another long kiss, leaning back to look Alex in the eye. “Ever?”

“There was some stuff in college,” Alex says, looking reluctant. “But, that... it wasn’t a good time.”

Maggie studies her, joins their hands together, and brings the fingertips to her lips.

“Stop me anytime, ok?” she instructs.

“I’m good,” Alex insists, dipping in to kiss her, full on the mouth. “Just... show me.”

So Maggie shows her, and it’s not perfect, but it’s  _ easy _ . Easier than it’s been with anyone else, because Alex is as observant as she’s intuitive, and she’s intune with Maggie in a way she’s never felt before. When she touches Maggie, it feels like she’s always known how to, and just temporarily forgot it.

It is much later in the night, when Alex is resting on top of her, well on the way to sleep, that Maggie hears the quiet words mumbled against her chest.

“He hurt her.”

Maggie tenses, hands tightening their hold around Alex.

“She tried to hide it,” Alex continues, from where she is, as if speaking the words into Maggie’s skin is safer than saying it to her face. “I didn’t catch on, at first.”

Her fingers are tracing strange glyphs into Maggie’s skin.

“I think part of me wanted to not see,” Alex admits. “I was doing so well in New York, after J’onn recruited me. Sober, busy, finally with a purpose. It was great. I guess I just told myself that Kara was fine, too, without ever bothering to actually check on her.”

She sounds bitter, as if she blames herself.

“You were living your life,” Maggie says. “That’s not a crime, Alex.”

“And then our department got let go, and I came home,” Alex says, as if she hadn’t heard Maggie, or perhaps because she doesn’t think she deserves the absolution. “And, I mean, Kara always liked sweaters and button-ups. I didn’t think much about it, until I walked into her room one day, and I saw the redness around her forearm.”

Maggie sucks in a sharp breath, as she feels Alex shake against her, and rubs her hair as comfortingly as she knows how.

“I thought it was just an accident at first, maybe from some dangerous assignment at work,” Alex says. “I was all set to rip into CatCo, but it was Cat who clued me in that something different might be taking place.”

Her head shakes, and Maggie feels wetness staining her shirt.

“I saw red,” Alex whispers. “Kara swore it just happened once, Mike just gripped her too hard one time. She tried so hard to get me to drop it, but I was ready to march into his house and set him on fire.”

“I don’t blame you,” Maggie says. “Oh,  _ Alex.” _

“I would have, too,” Alex says, and there’s a hitch in her voice. “But Kara, she loved him. She thought it was fate or something, meeting someone from her homeland, after she thought it had all been destroyed. It took her so long to accept that she couldn’t change him.”

She looks up, and Maggie traces the sad lines of her face with her fingers, realizing just how deeply all this must have impacted her, if she’s still so torn up about it now. For all her claims about being willing to kill him ruthlessly, this must have been something she had agonized over for months.

“So, you were telling the truth,” she says. “He really wouldn’t leave her alone.”

Alex nods, miserably. 

“I was terrified out of my mind,” she says. “After they broke up, I didn’t know when he would show up next, or what he’d do to her, if I wasn’t there. I tried to write him threatening anonymous letters to deter him, but it didn’t work. Astra was furious too, when she found out, and Cat and Lena... furious didn’t even begin to describe them.”

“So, you began to plan,” Maggie says. “It was you who set all this into motion, wasn’t it?”

Again, a miserable nod.

“I think Kara always knew,” Alex says. “Or, she suspected, anyways. She stuck to me like glue, after she knew that I’d found out about him following her around. I think she thought if she kept a close enough watch on me, I wouldn’t try anything.”

“But, you planned it anyways.”

“I was surprised at how willing people were to fall in line,” Alex confesses. “Winn and Astra were always a given, but Lena was almost as willing. And Cat might seem cold, but she’d found out too late about Leslie Willis to stop it, and she never forgave Mike for it. J’onn... J’onn just came along for me, and even offered up the idea of doing it on the train, far away from American authorities.”

“That’s why you booked every compartment on the train,” Maggie murmurs. “Clark Kent, whoever he is... he was never supposed to show up, was he? It was just an extra compartment you booked, to make sure no stranger got on that carriage.”

Alex nods again. Her face looks pale, and even a little scared now, as if the enormity of what she’d done has ambushed her unexpectedly.

“But, why all the complications?” Maggie asks. “Why the runaround, and all the fake clues?”

That question is rewarded with a tired smile.

“Oh, Maggie,” Alex says. “Because of you.”

“Me?”

“We were all set up to carry it out, and then you showed up,” Alex says. “I recognized you long before any of the others did. I knew that if anyone could see through our plan, it was you.”

“So that’s why you made it all so convoluted,” Maggie says. “The tracksuit ending up in my luggage, playing around with the timing of the murder... those text messages.”

“That was Lena’s girlfriend, Sam,” Alex says, a wry smile slipping out. “We had her texting Mike under a fake name, so we could get insight into his mindset, and whether he was in on our plans or not. It was easy to instruct her to text him until 12.15, and then stop abruptly. We knew you’d be suspicious of everything neatly pointing to the murder being committed at a quarter past one, but we were hoping you’d be satisfied with the earlier timing.”

“You thought of everything,” Maggie says, some professional admiration filtering through her restraint.

Alex’s replying shrug is almost bashful.

“But, you changed something,” Maggie points out.

Alex’s face twists, and that’s all the confirmation Maggie needs.

“The plan was for all of you to kill him in the dark,” she says. “Instead, you stabbed him first. You made sure he was dead by your hands, before anyone else could set in on him.”

“I thought, if our plan failed, if Kara was implicated, then I could at least take the fall.” Alex’s face shifts back into sad lines. “It was a last ditch attempt.”

“Even knowing I could send you to prison for it?” Maggie asks.

Alex just stays silent, staring at her, until Maggie tangles her fingers in her hair, and tugs her back down against her chest.

“You don’t need to explain yourself,” she says. “I already made my decision; I’m not going to change it.”

“I know.” Alex’s words are muffled into her skin again. “I just wanted you to know why I did it.”

“I do.”

“She was safe,” Alex says. “I made sure she was safe from him forever. It was the least I could do.”

“Alex,” Maggie murmurs. “Alex, no.”

“It was,” Alex insists. “If I’d just been around more, paid more attention to what was going on in her life, maybe I could’ve prevented all this.”

_ That wasn’t your fault,  _ Maggie thinks, and her grip around Alex tightens.

“Where’s Kara, now?” she asks.

“With Lena and Sam.” Alex’s face softens, a brilliant smile shining through. “She’s safe. She’s so much better now, with the two of them. They’ve always made her happy.”

She trails off, and shrugs. Maggie understands, and draws her in.

“And you’re safe with me,” she says. “We can figure out the happy part, too, going forward.”

Alex swallows, and turns to her.

“I hate that you had to lie for me.”

“I made my choice,” Maggie says. “I went in with eyes open. I’m not going to beat myself up over it, and I’m not going to let you do that either.”

“But, this is what you care about,” Alex says, shifting up and nosing against her face. “The law... justice—”

“I care about protecting people,” Maggie says, closing her eyes as Alex deposits kisses on her cheeks, tender and slow.

“There’s a reason I left the force,” she continues. “At some point, when they let people get away with practically murder, I knew I could do more from outside the system than in.”

The thought enters her head then, how weird it is that she’d met Alex in such unusual circumstances. With their professions being what they were, they were bound to have met anyways, over some case or another. How many times had Alex just missed her, during all the times that Maggie had visited the New York FIG to consult them on the Roulette case? How many times had Maggie just missed her, during the FBI’s visits to the NCPD? Instead, they had run into each other in a whole different country, in an impossible situation. Maggie has to smile.

When she opens her eyes again, Alex is stroking her cheeks with gentle circles of her thumb, while her gaze roves over Maggie, making her flush.

“What’re you looking at?” she asks, the question ending in a half-laugh.

“You,” Alex says.

Maggie laughs again, and darts up to kiss her. Alex catches her, and they stay like that, kissing indolently, lips and tongue moving against each other as if they’ve got all the time in the world.

Because, finally, they do.

“Missed you,” Alex murmurs against her mouth again, as they break apart, before nipping her bottom lip, and bringing her in for another kiss.

Maggie tries to reply, but the words get lost somewhere between their mouths, breaking up into formless moans.

“You barely know me,” she says, when they part.

“I know enough,” Alex says, exhaling contentedly against the curve of her neck.

Maggie presses one final kiss against her hair, before shifting Alex off of her, so that they’re lying side by side, breathing into the shared space, and basking in each other’s presence. Alex is still half-draped over her, and she’s heavy, weighing Maggie down with a feeling of contentment and security, until she feels physically incapable of rising from the bed.

She nods off without even realizing it, her breathing coming slower and slower. It isn’t until some minutes into the soporific silence that Alex speaks again, her voice low and drowsy.

“Maggie, what you said before... about being safe?”

“Mm-hmm?” Maggie replies, just as sleepily.

Alex’s hand slides over her abdomen, skimming just below her breasts, before curving around her side and resting there, solid as oak.

“You’re safe with me too, ok?”

Maggie smiles into the night, though she knows that Alex can’t see it.

\---

 

When Maggie wakes up, she’s alone in the bed, and she feels lost for about two seconds, before she sees Alex standing by the window, peering out into the bright morning.

“You’re still here,” she says, but she isn’t surprised at that, not exactly. Not anymore than she had been to bump into Alex the day before.

“Of course,” Alex says, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

She looks soft in the morning light, and warm, and part of Maggie just wants to gather her up in her arms again, and feel the security of skin-to-skin contact once more. Another part of her wants desperately to talk this out, to know that there’s something more here than just soft touches in the safety of darkness.

“That simple?”

“The simplest thing in my life,” Alex replies.

“How can you sound so certain?” Maggie demands. “How do you know?”

Alex looks back at her with wonder.

“What?” Maggie asks.

“It’s just that”—Alex shakes her head, smiling lopsidedly—“this is the most unsure I’ve ever seen you. And I’ve seen you in the middle of solving a case that was supposed to be unsolvable.”

“Sorry,” Maggie says, fingers tracing the threads of her blanket, as she looks down. “I guess I’m not really used to people sticking around, let alone in a situation like this.”

She hears Alex sigh, and feels the warmth of her gaze on her, like the sun settling into her skin.

“I don’t know what to say,” Alex admits. “I just know that I woke up two days ago, and I thought of being free, but far away from you. And then, I thought of meeting you, and the possibility of going to prison opening up again, and meeting you still seemed like the better choice.”

“Yeah?” Maggie asks.

“You know, I was never sad or miserable, or at least, I never thought of myself in those terms,” Alex says, looking back out the window, pensive. “I was just.. empty, and if you don’t want me, I’ll go back to being empty, and it’ll be fine. Except, this time I’ll know I’m empty, and I wouldn’t know how to fill it up again.”

“I do want you,” Maggie says, and all her insecurity, usually kept well under wraps, seems to be bursting out of its seams today. “But I just... how can I do all that for you?”

“You already do,” Alex says, smiling and looking back at her again. In the clear light, there’s no uncertainty in her eyes. “I mean, you exist, don’t you?”

Maggie wants to melt right down into the ground, or at least freeze this moment in time, and frame it up on a wall so she can visit it again and again.

“So, where do we go from here?” Alex asks her.

“I don’t know,” Maggie confesses. “But, I don’t have to report in until noon, and there’s a nice breakfast place a couple blocks down. How about we hit it up?”

It’s sunny, she notices, when Alex parts the curtains fully, but it’s always sunny in National City. Then again, Maggie has never seen it shine on Alex’s face in the morning, as she smiles back at her, and that makes all the difference.

“Breakfast sounds nice,” Alex says, walking over and ducking back under the blankets, snuggling into Maggie. “But, not for a couple of hours, ok?”

Maggie nods, and settles back against her warm body, snuggling in just as tight.

It is, in most ways, the beginning of the story, rather than the end.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this rather self-indulgent fic. I love murder mysteries and for some reason my brain wouldn't let me rest until I'd tried my hand at writing one. 
> 
> Since someone asked, I want to confirm that yes, the thing with Kara being with Lena and Sam was indeed supposed to be referring to a Superreigncorp OTP.
> 
> Thank you to @Sralinchen, who beta-ed this _after_ posting, and who "famous last words"-ed me - after I breezily said that I'd probably caught all the mistakes in my previous readthroughs - by finding 140 more mistakes XD

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to post a disclaimer here that this story was entirely plotted out mid-season 2, right after the Valentine's episode. It's taken me this long to actually write it up because I had other WIPs on the go, but this fic definitely reflects how I felt about Mon-El at that time. I absolutely loathed him and hated how he took away Kara's agency, and kept the plot from focusing on her. He was a lot better in Season 3, and even though I still hated that they spent so much time on him in S3, he wasn't an absolutely horrendous person the way he was in S2.
> 
> All this preamble is to put this fic in proper context. I didn't hate S3 Mon-El, even though I still found him a useless addition to the plot. I did absolutely loathe S2 Mon-El, and he is 100% what inspired this fic.


End file.
